Almost without words Barlow and the girl had toiled up the ascent, scarcely noticed of the throng; and now Bootea said:  “Sahib, remain here, I go to speak to the High Priest.”

Barlow saw her speak into the open portal of one of the cloister chambers that surrounded the temple, then disappear within.  After a time she came forth, and approaching him said, “The Priest would speak with thee, Sahib; for because of many things I have told him who thou art, though mentioning not the nature of the mission, for that is not permitted.”

Barlow’s foreboding of evil was now a certainty as he strode forward.

The priest rose at the Captain’s entrance.  He was a fine specimen of the true Brahmin, the intellectual cult, that through successive generations of mental sway and homage from the millions of untutored ones had become conscious of its power.  Tall, spare of form, with wide high forehead and full expressive eyes, almost olive skin, Barlow felt that the Swami was quite unlike the begging yogis and mendicants; a man who was by the close alliance of his intellect to the essence of created things a Sannyasi.  Larger in his conceptions than the yogis who misconstrued the Vedas and the Law of Manu as imposing an association of filth—­smeared ashes, and uncombed, uncleansed hair—­as a symbol of piety and abnegation of spirit, a visible assertion that the body had passed from regard—­that it, with its sensualities and ungodly cravings, had become subservient to the spirit, the soul.

Swami Sarasvati was austere; Barlow felt that he dwelt on a plane where the trivialities of life were but pestilential insects, to be endured stoically in a physical way, with the mind freed from their irritation grasping grander things; life was a wheel that revolved with the certainty of celestial bodies.

It was so curious, and yet so unfailing, that Bootea, with her hyper-intuition should have found, selected this spiritual tutor from the horde of gurus, byragies, and yogis that were connecting links between the tremendous pantheon of grotesque gods and the common people.  Here she had come to an intellectual, though no doubt an ascetic; one possessed of fierce fervour in his ministry.  There would be no swaying of that will force developed to the keen flexible unflawed temper of a Damascus blade.

Now the priest was saying in the asl (pure) Hindustani of the high-bred Brahmin:  “The Sahib confers honour upon Sri Swami Sarasvati by this visit, for the woman has related that he is of high caste amongst the Englay and has been trusted by the Raj with a mission.  That he comes in the garb of my people is consideration for it avoids outrage to their feelings.  I am glad to know that the Englay are so considerate.”

“I came, Swami, because of regard for Bootea for she is like a princess.”

The priest shot a quick, searching look into the eyes of the speaker, then he asked, “And what service would the Sahib ask?”