For many weeks after the coming of Roy she had hesitated, before she found courage to adventure farther into the misty region of his faith or unfaith, in things not seen.

“If I am bothering you with troublesome questions—­forgive.  But, in our Indian way of marriage, it is taught that without sharing spiritual life there cannot arrive true union,” she had explained, not without secret tremors lest she fail to evoke full response.  And what such failure would mean, for her, she could hardly expect him to understand.

But—­by the blessing of Sarasvati, Giver of Wisdom—­she had succeeded, beyond hope, in dispelling the shy reluctance of his race to talk of the ‘big little things.’  Even to-day she could recall the thrill of that moment:—­he, kneeling beside the great chair in his studio—­their sanctuary; she holding the warm bundle of new life against her breast.

In one long look his eyes had answered her.  “Nothing short of ’true union’ will satisfy me,” he had said with a quiet seriousness more impressive than any lovers’ fervour.  “God knows if I’m worthy to enter your inner shrine.  But unwilling—­never.  In the ‘big little things’ you are pre-eminent.  I am simply your extra child—­mother of my son.”

That tribute was her charter of wifehood.  It linked love with life; it set her, once for all, beyond the lurking fear of Jane; and gave her courage to face the promised visit to India, when Roy was six months old, to present him to his grandfather, Sir Lakshman Singh.

They had stayed nearly a year; a wonderful year of increasing knowledge, of fuller awakening ... and yet!

The ache of anticipation had been too poignant.  The foolish half-hope that Mataji might relent and sanctify this first grandchild with her blessing, was—­in the nature of things Oriental—­foredoomed to failure.  And not till she found herself back among sights and sounds hauntingly familiar, did she fully awake to the changes wrought in her by marriage with one of another race.  For, if she had profoundly affected Nevil’s personality, he had no less profoundly influenced her sense of values both in art and life.

She had also to reckon with the insidious process of idealising the absent.  Indian to the core, she was deeply imbued with the higher tenets of Hindu philosophy—­that lofty spiritual fabric woven of moonlight and mysticism, of logic and dreams.  But the new Lilamani, of Nevil’s making, could not shut her eyes to debasing forms of worship, to subterranean caverns of gross superstition, and lurking demons of cruelty and despair.  While Nevil was imbibing impressions of Indian Art, Lilamani was secretly weighing and probing the Indian spirit that inspired it; sifting the grain from the chaff—­a process closely linked with her personal life; because, for India, religion and life are one.

But no shadow had clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human relation.  And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of impressions, her secret doubts and fears.