'Very,' he replied, catching up the boy again. 'We are both black sheep. Come along, my hero, and scrub some of the likeness off.'
But, as he carried Jerry away on his shoulder to the dressing-room, he told himself that she was right. The boy was like him. Now that it had been suggested to him, he saw it clearly. Not in face, but in the nameless ways which show a likeness in the inward stuff that has gone, possibly, to make up a very dissimilar outside.
The explanation was simple, of course. It was a case of reversion. He himself had always been counted a typical Raymond, and Jerry, through his mother, had harked back to that distant, almost-forgotten ancestor. Something had made the current set that way once more; that was all.
But what something? Was it possible that the mind had this power as well as the body?
He swung the child to the attendant grimly, and bade him wash the chola sahib's face, and be sure to take off all the black.
That likeness, at any rate, need not remain. The other left him curiously helpless, curiously ashamed.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE TEMPLE OF VISESHWAR
Chris had followed his wife into the supper-room with the vague hope of feeling that he had a place somewhere, that he belonged to something, even to her. He had found her surrounded by strangers, and evidently forgetful of his very existence.
So a resentment had come to lessen his self-pity; resentment at many things. What right, for instance, had that proud old semi-savage to say that such as he were no friends to India? It was a lie. Such as he were its best friends. Yet, as he made the assertion, he knew it needed proof. What had such as he done to show their friendship? Very little. Even he himself----