Agitation against the sane measures embodied in the Rowlatt Bills was already astir, like bubbles round a pot before it boils.  And Inayat Khan had come straight from Bombay, where the National Congress had rejected with scorn the latest palliative from Home; had demanded the release of all revolutionaries, and wholesale repeal of laws against sedition.  Here was shop sufficiently ominous to overshadow all other topics:  and there was no gene, no constraint.  The Englishmen could talk freely in the presence of cultured Indians who stood for Jaipur and Hyderabad, since both States were loyal to the core.

Dyan, like Lance, spoke little and pondered much on the talk of these men, whose straight speech and thoughts were refreshing as their own sea breezes after the fumes of rhetoric, the fog of false values that had bemused his brain these three years.  Strange how all the ugliness and pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands, untroubled, with that ‘imperialistic bureaucrat’ the Commissioner of Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to ’remove from this mortal coil.’  Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing danger to himself and his kind.

“There’s no sense in disguising the unpalatable truth that New India hates us,” said he in his gruff, deliberate voice.  “Present company excepted, I hope!”

He gravely inclined his head towards Dyan, who responded mutely with a flutter at his heart.  Impossible!  The man could not suspect——?

And the man, looking him frankly in the eyes, added:  “The spirit of the Mutiny’s not extinct—­and we know it, those of us that count.”

Dyan simply sat dumfounded.  It was Sir Lakshman who said, in his guarded tone:  “Nevertheless, sir, the bulk of our people are loyal and peaceable.  Only I fear there are some in England who do not count that fact to their credit.”

“If they ever become anything else, it won’t be to our credit,” put in Roy.  “If we can’t stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we shall deserve to go under.”

“Well spoken, Roy,” said his grandfather still more quietly.  “Let us hope it is not yet too late.  Sadi says, ’The fountain-head of a spring can be blocked with a stick; but in full flood, it cannot be crossed, even on an elephant.’”

They exchanged a glance that stirred Roy’s pulses and gave him confidence to go on:  “I don’t believe it is too late.  But what bothers me is this—­are we treating our moral force as it deserves?  Are we giving them loyalty in return for theirs—­the sort they can understand?  With a dumb executive and voluble ‘patriots,’ persuading or intimidating, the poor beggars haven’t a dog’s chance, unless we openly stand by them; openly smite our enemies—­and theirs.”

He boldly addressed himself to Mayne, the sole symbol of authority present; and the Commissioner listened, with a gleam of amused approval in his eye.