He had almost forgotten his birthright, forgotten that he had been called by God to a place of honour--to the place of teacher; that his was the right to explain the mystery to the people, to show them the way of salvation.
But he remembered it now, and all insensibly a balm came to his pain from the knowledge of what lay about him, unseen, yet familiar. He sate, listening to the lap of the river on the foot-worn steps, picturing to himself its fringe of dead flower-petals from the dead day's worship: and even the stir in the vague shadow of the pipal trees, telling of the sacred monkeys who with the dawn would descend to claim their share of offerings with the gods, seemed to still his own restlessness.
And as he listened, feeling, more than thinking, the asceticism of many a holy ancestor who had left the world behind to follow his ideal of good, rose up in suggestion that he should do so also.
Why not? Why not claim his inherited right of sainthood in order to preach his doctrine? Was not that, after all, the only thing worth doing in this life? Was not this the only reality? Was not all else 'Maya' or deception?
Such glimpses of the real beyond the unreal come to most of us at times, making us feel the spin of the round world we have deemed so steady beneath our feet, making us feel the fixity of the stars above us, the mysterious denial of sunset, the illimitable promise of dawn.
And when they come, peace comes with them.
It came to Krishn Davenund, making him forget the red Hammersmith omnibus and all things pertaining thereto, as he sat feeling the familiar touch of the darkness, until in the east, beyond the river, the grey glimmer of coming light in the sky showed him the curved shadow of the world's horizon, and after a time the grey glimmer of the curved river came to show him the straight shadow of the temple.
Then, in the vague light, he stood up, with a vague light in his mind also. As he did so, something fell from his arm. It was his wife's shawl, which he had been carrying unconsciously all the time. As he picked it up, the coincidence of its faint pinkish colour banished the regret which came to him at having forgotten to give it her ere leaving. For this was yogi colour, so called because it is worn by all ascetics.
His English wife had admired the delicate salmon-pink, and he had therefore had her white Rampore shawl dyed that tint. Strange indeed! A thousand times strange, that this should be close to his hand now!
The cue thus given was followed, and with a passion which stifled his sense of bathos, he was the next instant throwing off his dress-clothes. So, with the thin, fine shawl about his nakedness, he passed down the steps towards the river, towards the sacrament of his race and caste.