His vehemence was guarantee of that. Very gently he drew back the sari and looked deep into her eyes.
"Why should we only tell the ugly ones, like Aunt Jane? Anyway, I've told you my truest one now—and I'm not ashamed of it."
"No need. It is a jewel I will treasure in my heart."
She dropped the veil of lightness, giving him sincerity for sincerity as he deserved. "But—Ancient one, have you seen so many girls and women in your long life——?"
"I've seen a pretty good mixture of all sorts—Oxford, London, and round here," he insisted unabashed. "And I've had my wits about me. Of course they're most of them jolly and straight. Good fellows in fact; talking our slang; playing our games. No harm, of course. But it kills the charm of contrast—the supreme charm. They understand that in India better than we do here."
The truth of that last Lilámani could not deny. Too clearly she saw in the violent upheaval of Western womanhood the hidden germs of tragedy, for women themselves, for the race.
"You are right, Roy," she said, smiling into his serious face. "From our—from Hindu point of view, greatest richness of life come from greatest possible difference between men and women. And most of all it is so in Rajputana. But over here...." She sighed, a small shivering sigh. The puzzle and pain of it went too deep with her. "All this screaming and snatching and scratching for wrong kind of things hurts my heart; because—I am woman and they are women—desecrating that in us which is a symbol of God. Nature made women for ministering to Life and Love. Are they not believing, or not caring, that by struggling to imitate man (while saying with their lips how they despise him!) they are losing their own secret, beautiful differences, so important for happiness—for the race. But marriage in the West seems more for convenience of lovers than for the race——"
"Yet your son, though he is of the West—must not consider his own inclination or convenience——"
"My son," she interposed, gently inflexible, "because he is also of the East, must consider this matter of the race; must try and think it with his father's mind."
"All the same—making such a point of it seems like an insult—to you——"