Next evening Dyan arrived.  He stayed for an hour, and did most of the talking.  But his unnatural volubility suggested disturbance deep down.

Only once Roy had a glimpse of the true Dyan, when he presented Aruna’s ‘prasad,’ consecrated by her touch.  In silence Dyan set it on the table; and reverently touched, with his finger-tips, first the small parcel, then his own forehead.

“Aruna—­sister,” he said on an under breath.  But he would not be drawn into talking of her, of his grandfather, or of home affairs:  and his abrupt departure left Roy with a maddening sense of frustration.

He lay awake half the night; and reached certain conclusions that atoned for a violent headache next morning.  First and best—­Dyan was not a genuine convert.  All this ferment and froth did not spell reasoned conviction.  He was simply ensnared; his finer nature warped by the ‘delusion of irresistible suggestion,’ deadlier than any weapon of War.  His fanatical loyalty savoured of obsession.  So much the better.  An obsession could be pricked like an air-ball with the right weapon at the right moment.  That, as Roy saw it, was his task:—­in effect, a ghostly duel between himself and Chandranath for the soul of Dyan Singh; and the fate of Aruna virtually hung on the issue.

Should he succeed, Chandranath would doubtless guess at his share in Dyan’s defection; and few men care about courting the enmity of the unscrupulous.  That is the secret power behind the forces of anarchy, above all in India, where social and spiritual boycott can virtually slay a man without shedding of blood.  For himself, Roy decided the game was worth the candle.  The question remained—­how far that natural shrinking might affect Dyan?  And again—­how much did he know of Chandranath’s designs on Aruna?

Roy decided to spring the truth on him next time—­and note the effect.  Dyan had said he would come again one evening; and—­sooner than Roy expected—­he came.  Again he was abnormally voluble, as if holding his cousin at arm’s length by italicising his own fanatical fervour, till Roy’s impatience subsided into weariness and he palpably stifled a yawn.

Dyan, detecting him, stopped dead, with a pained, puzzled look that went to Roy’s heart.  For he loved the real Dyan, even while he was bored to extinction with the semi-religious verbiage that poured from him like water from a jug.

“Awfully sorry,” he apologised frankly.  “But I’ve been over-dosed with that sort of stuff lately; and I’m damned if I can swallow it like you do.  Yet I’m dead keen for India to have the best, all round, that she’s capable of digesting—­yet.  So’s Grandfather.  You can’t deny it.”

Dyan frowned irritably.  “Grandfather’s prejudiced and old-fashioned.”

“He’s longer-sighted than most of your voluble friends.  He doesn’t rhapsodise.  He knows.—­But I’m not old-fashioned.  Nor is Aruna.”