And he had found--what?
Something worse?--yes!--for one brief second he admitted the truth that it was worse; that Naraini, despite her ignorance, would have given him something nearer to that ideal of all men who were worth calling men, than Viva with her cigarettes, her pink ruffles, her strange mixture of refinement and coarseness, of absolute contempt for passion and constant appeal to it. Why had he ever forsaken his people? Why had he ever forsaken her--Naraini?
'I am Brahmin, my hand is pure.'
The memory of her voice, her face, as she spoke the words returned to him, and, with an irresistible rush, all that had swept him from his moorings, swept him from the common current of the lives around him, all the sentimentality, all the intuitive bias towards things spiritual, swept him back again to that life--and to Naraini!
'It's a rippin' song, ain't it, sir?' remarked Jân-Ali-shân, who had been warbling away at the runs and trills like any blackbird, as he watched Chris Davenant's listening face. 'Wraps itself round a feller somehow. Kep' me from a lot o' tommy rot, that song 'as in my time, an' sent me to the flowing bowl instead.'
As he walked over to see if the tank was full, he whistled,
'Let the toast pass, here's to the lass,
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a glass,'
with jaunty unconcern. He returned in a moment, the coolies behind him carrying the iron ladder back to its hooks on the pier.
'All right, sir,' he reported. 'Give 'er two men an' she'll 'old her own against a thousand.'
Chris, absorbed in his thoughts, made an effort to wrench himself from them by assenting.