so miraculously entangled, that
neither gods nor godlings, nor household despots of East or West, had
power to sever them. From one swift pencil sketch, stolen without
leave--he sitting on the path below, she dreaming on the Hotel balcony
above--had blossomed the twin flower of their love: the deeper revealing
of marriage--its living texture woven of joy and pain; and the wonder of
their after-life together--a wonder that, to her ardent, sensitive
spirit, still seemed new every morning, like the coming of the sun. A
poet in essence, she shared with all true poets that sense of eternal
freshness in familiar things that, perhaps, more than any other gift of
God, keeps the bloom on every phase and every relation of life. By her
temperament of genius, she had quickened in her husband the flickering
spark that might else have been smothered under opposing influences.
Each, in a quite unusual degree, had fulfilled the life of the other,
and so wrought harmony from conflicting elements of race and religion
that seemed fated to wreck their brave adventure. To gain all, they had
risked all: and events had amazingly justified them.

Within a year of his ill-considered marriage Sir Nevil had astonished
all who knew him with the unique Exhibition of the now famous Ramayana
pictures, inspired by his wife: a series of arresting canvases, setting
forth the story of India's great epic, her confession of faith in the
two supreme loyalties--of the Queen to her husband, of the King to his
people. His daring venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic
and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting
to genius: and Lilamani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped
becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to
Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through
the malign influence of Jane--her evil genius during those wonderful,
difficult, early months of marriage.

Nevil had returned to find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his
own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic
proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed attitude in the neighbourhood,
when Lilamani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband with a son.

But--for all the gracious condescension of the elderly, and the frank
curiosity of the young--only a discerning few had made any real headway
with this attractive, oddly disconcerting child of another continent;
this creat