God manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted.  Her father had given her that assurance; and to it she clung, as a child in a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.

She was none the less eager to glean all she could assimilate of the religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did not ardently believe.  Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members of his family.  Jane—­out of regard for his wishes—­had refrained from frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia—­a mild elder Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest they annoy him and he put a final veto on them.  Being well versed in their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their strange illogical way of believing.  The Christianity of Christ she could accept.  It was a faith of the heart and the life.  But its crystallised forms and dogmas proved a stumbling-block to this embarrassing slip of a Hindu girl, who calmly reminded the Reverend Jeffrey Sale that the creed of his Church had not really been inspired by Christ, but dictated by Constantine and the Council of Nicea; who wanted to know why, in so great a religion, was there no true worship of woman—­no recognising, in the creative principle, the Divine Motherhood of God?  Finally, she had scandalised them both by quarrelling with their exclusive belief in one single instance, through endless ages, of the All-embracing, and All-creating revealed in terms of human life.  Was not that same idea a part of her own religion—­a world-wide doctrine of Indo-Aryan origin?  Was every other revealing false, except that one made to an unbelieving race only two thousand years ago?  To her—­unregenerate but not unbelieving—­the message of Krishna seemed to strike a deeper note of promise.  “Wherever irreligion prevails and true religion declines, there I manifest myself in a human form to establish righteousness and to destroy evil.”

So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best.  But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field.  And Lilamani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private creed of her own;—­shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the grosser superstitions of her own faith, and weaving together the mystical elements that are the life-blood of all religious beliefs.

For the lamps are many, but the flame is one....

* * * * *

Not till the consummation of motherhood had lifted her status—­in her own eyes at least—­did she venture to speak intimately with Nevil on this vital matter.  Though debarred from sharing of sacred ceremonies, she could still aspire to be true Sahardamini—­’spiritual helpmate.’  But to that end he also must co-operate; he must feel the deeper need....