:
what is it?

Now, this woman of the zenana believed not in the God of your fathers
and mine. She was a pagan; her Heaven and hell were ruled by a
thousand gods, and her temples were filled with their images. Yet this
thing, remorse, was stabbing her with its hot needles, till no torture
devised by man could equal it.

She was the poor foolish woman who loved Durga Ram; loved him as these
wild Asiatic women love, from murder to the poisoned cup. Loved him,
and knew that he loved her not, but used her for his own selfish ends.
There you have it. Had he loved her, remorse never would have lifted
its head or raised its voice. And again, had not Umballa sought the
white woman, this butterfly of the harem might have died of old age
without unburdening her soul. Remorse is the result of a crime
committed uselessly. Humanity is unchangeable, for all its variety of
skins.

And here was this woman, wanting to tell some one!

Umballa had done a peculiar thing: he had not laid hand upon either
Ramabai or Pundita. When asked the reason for this generosity toward a
man who but recently put a price on his head, Umballa smiled and
explained that Ramabai was not only broken politically, but was a
religious outcast. It was happiness for such a person to die, so he
preferred that Ramabai should live.

Secretly, however, Ramabai's revolutionary friends were still back of
him, though they pretended to bow to the yoke of the priests.

So upon this day matters stood thus: the colonel, Kathlyn, Bruce and
Winnie were prisoners again; Ahmed was in hiding, and Ramabai and his
wife mocked by those who once had cheered them. The ingratitude of
kings is as nothing when compared to the ingratitude of a people.

A most ridiculous country: to crown Kathlyn again (for the third time!)
and then to lock her up! Next to superstition as a barrier to progress
there stands custom. Everything one did must be done as some one else
had done it; the initiative was still chained up in the temples, it
belonged to the bald priests only.

But Umballa had made two mistakes: he should have permitted the white
people to leave the country and given a silken cord to the chief
eunuch, to apply as directed. There are no written laws among the dark
peoples that forbid the disposal of that chattel known as a woman of
the harem, or zenana. There are certain customs that even the all
powerful British Raj must ignore.

The catafalque of the dead king