“You are right, Roy,” she said, smiling into his serious face.  “From our—­from Hindu point of view, greatest richness of life come from greatest possible difference between men and women.  And most of all it is so in Rajputana.  But over here....”  She sighed, a small shivering sigh.  The puzzle and pain of it went too deep with her.  “All this screaming and snatching and scratching for wrong kind of things hurts my heart; because—­I am woman and they are women—­desecrating that in us which is a symbol of God.  Nature made women for ministering to Life and Love.  Are they not believing, or not caring, that by struggling to imitate man (while saying with their lips how they despise him!) they are losing their own secret, beautiful differences, so important for happiness—­for the race.  But marriage in the West seems more for convenience of lovers than for the race——­”

“Yet your son, though he is of the West—­must not consider his own inclination or convenience——­”

“My son,” she interposed, gently inflexible, “because he is also of the East, must consider this matter of the race; must try and think it with his father’s mind.”

“All the same—­making such a point of it seems like an insult—­to you——­”

“No, Roy. Not to say that——­” The flash in her eyes, that was almost anger, startled and impressed him more than any spoken word.  “No thought that ever came in your father’s mind could be—­like insult to me.  Oh, my dear, have you not sense to know that for an old English family like his, with roots down deep in English soil and history, it is not good that mixture of race should come twice over in two generations.  To you—­our kind of marriage appears a simple affair.  You see only how close we are now, in love and understanding.  You cannot imagine all the difficulties that went before.  We know them—­and we are proud, because they became like dust under our feet.  Only to you—­Dilkusha, I could tell ... a little, if you wish—­for helping you to understand.”

“Please tell,” he said, and his hand closed on hers.

So, leaning back among her cushions—­speaking very simply in the low voice that was music to his ears—­she told....

* * * * *

The telling—­fragmentary, yet vivid—­lasted less than half an hour.  But in that half-hour Roy gleaned a jewel of memory that the years would not dim.  The very words would remain....

For Lilamani—­wandering backward in fancy through the Garden of Remembrance—­revealed more than she realised of the man she loved and of her own passionate spirit, compact of fire and dew, the sublimated essence of the Eastern woman at her best.

Yet in spite of that revealing—­or rather because of it—­rebellion stirred afresh.  And, as if divining his thoughts, she impulsively raised her hand.  “Now, Roy, you must promise.  Only so, I can speak to Dad and rest his mind.”