The Jamadar’s tribute from man to man, one encased in a dark skin and one in a white, was akin to the tribulation that would not be driven from Barlow’s mind over the Gulab, that in their case made the matter of a skin colourisation the bar sinister.  He rode in a brooding silence.  And now the way was one of ascent toward the pass through the Vindhya mountains; a red gravelly undulating formation had given place to basaltic rocks.  They passed from groups of mhowa trees and left behind a wide shallow stream, its bed dotted with pools fringed by great kowa trees, and its banks lined by a thick green cover of jamun and karonda.  Thorny babul thrust their spiked branches out over the roadway, white with tufts of cotton torn by its thorns from bales, loose pressed, on their way to market in buffalo carts; “Babul the thief,” the natives called this acacia.  Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms.  From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced at the clattering cart.

A spotted owlet, disturbed by the driver’s encouraging, “Pop-pop!  Dih-dih-dih!  Ho-ho-ho! children of jungle swine; brothers to buffalo!” addressed to the horses lagging in the climb, fluttered away with his silly little cackle.

These incidents of travel were almost unnoticed of Barlow.  All up the climb the retrospect was with him, claiming his thoughts.  Just that—­all that was in evidence, a pigment in the skin, caste; and yet reacting away back to God’s mandate against the union of the white and black.  And verily a sin to be visited even unto the third and fourth generation, for the bar sinister would be upon his children; they would be half-castes with all of the opprobrium the name carried.  Even the son of a king, the offspring of such a union would be spoken of in mess and drawing-room as a half-caste:  the indelible sign would be upon him, the blue tint to the white moons in his finger nails.  Barlow shuddered.  Why contemplate the matter at all—­it was impossible.  Nana Sahib had named the barrier when he had spoken of varna, meaning colour, as caste, a shirt-of-mail that protected from disaster.

Sometimes as he dropped back past the tonga, the face of Bootea would appear beneath the lifted curtain, and though on the lips would be a sweet ravishing smile, the eyes were pathetic, full of heart hunger.  Sometimes he vowed that he would put off the parting—­dream on; carry her on to her people at Chunda.  Then he would realise that this was cowardice, a desire flooding his sense of nobility into a chasm of possible disaster; not fair to the girl; the animal mastery of male over female, the domination of sex.  Beyond doubt, wrapped in his arms, not even the omnipotence of the gods would take her away from him.  If