For years the germ of it had lived in him like a seed in darkness—­growing with him as he grew.  All incidents and impressions that struck deep had served to vitalise it:  that early championship of his mother; her tales of Rajputana; his friendship with Desmond and Dyan; and, not least, his father’s Ramayana pictures in the long gallery at home, that had seized his imagination in very early days, when their appeal was simply to his innate sense of colour, and the reiterate wonder and beauty of his mother’s face in those moving scenes from the story of Sita—­India’s crown of womanhood....

Then there was the vivid memory of a room in his grandfather’s house; the stately old man, with his deep voice, speaking words that he only came to understand years after; and the look in his mother’s eyes, as she clapped her hands without sound, in the young fashion he loved....

And Chandranath—­another glimpse of India; the ugly side ...And stories from Tod’s ’Rajasthan’—­that grim and stirring panorama of romance and chivalry, of cruelty and cunning; orgies of slaughter and miracles of high-hearted devotion....

Barbaric; utterly foreign to life, as he had lived it, those tales of ancient India most strangely awakened in him a vague, thrilling sense of familiarity ...  He knew...!  Most clearly he knew the spirit that fired them all, when Akbar’s legions broke, wave on wave, against the mighty rock-fortress of Chitor—­far-famed capital of Mewar, thrice sacked by Islam and deserted by her royal house; so that only the ghost of her glory remains—­a protest, a challenge, an inspiration....

Sometimes he dreamed it all, with amazing vividness.  And in the dreams there was always the feeling that he knew ...It was a very queer, very exciting sensation.  He had spoken of it to no one but his mother and Tara; except once at Marlborough, when he had been moved to try whether Lance would understand.

Priceless old Desmond!  It had been killing to watch his face—­interested, sceptical, faintly alarmed, when he discovered that it was not an elaborate attempt to pull his leg.  By way of reassuring him, Roy had confessed it was a family failing.  When things went wrong his mother nearly always knew:  and sometimes she came to him, in dreams that were not exactly dreams.  What harm?

Desmond, puzzled and sceptical, was not prepared to hazard an opinion.  If Roy was made that way, of course he couldn’t help it.  And Roy, half indignant, had declared he wouldn’t for worlds be made any other way....

To-night, by some freak of memory, it all came back to him through the dream-inducing haze of tobacco smoke.  And there, on his writing-table, stood a full-length photograph of Lance in Punjab cavalry uniform.  Soldiering on the Indian Border, fulfilling himself in his own splendid fashion, he was clearly in his element; attached to his father’s old regiment, with Paul for second-in-command; proud of his strapping Sikhs and Pathans; watched over, revered and implicitly obeyed by the sons of men who had served with his father—­men for whom the mere name Desmond was a talisman.  For that is India’s way.