"On your son."
"And the child will inherit your fortune?"
"Everything; and as soon as he comes of age he will take my place in the family councils and you will be as one that has died in a foreign land."
Ananda rose to his feet intimating that as far as he was concerned the interview was at an end.
"Your answer, my son! your answer! what news am I to carry to your mother?" cried Pantulu, in sudden dismay, as he realised two facts—his son was leaving him, and he had failed miserably in his attempt to win him back.
"I have nothing to say that has not been already said." Ananda spoke with evident pain. It grieved him to wound his father by refusing to comply with his wishes. He knew of what vital importance it was to a Hindu to have the assurance that the funeral rites would be duly performed by a fitting and proper member of the family; and he found the greatest difficulty in maintaining his honesty of speech. The temptation to temporise was strong. "It is impossible, even if I desired it, to re-establish my faith in the Hindu teaching concerning the future life. It is a miserable groping in the dark, a wilful blinding of the eyes; the whole thing is a relic of the ancestor worship of a barbarous people not worthy of our nation with its present civilisation. I must have something better——"
"My son! my son!" interrupted his father in an agony of disappointment and grief. "It is killing me! Have mercy on me! My life is bound up in yours! I cannot live without you! Keep your beliefs secretly if you will, but I beg, I pray you conform outwardly to the faith of your ancestors. In their names I command you to come back and do your duty——"
The door of the house opened and Gunga came out confronting her son for the first time since his return. Ananda put the palms of his hands together and repeated his greeting mechanically.
"May the gods protect you, most excellent and beloved mother!"
She received the salutations with an exclamation of contempt.