I was startled, and asked her how she could do that.
"Oh," she said, "I waited at your door in the evening, while you were at dinner, and took some food from your plate when it was carried out."
This was a surprise to me, for every one in the village knew that I had been to Europe, and had eaten with Europeans. I was a vegetarian, no doubt, but the sanctity of my cook would not bear investigation, and the orthodox regarded my food as polluted.
The Devotee, noticing my sign of surprise, said: "My God, why should I come to you at all, if I could not take your food?"
I asked her what her own caste people would say. She told me she had already spread the news far and wide all over the village. The caste people had shaken their heads, but agreed that she must go her own way.
I found out that the Devotee came from a good family in the country, and that her mother was well to-do, and desired to keep her daughter. But she preferred to be a mendicant. I asked her how she made her living. She told me that her followers had given her a piece of land, and that she begged her food from door to door. She said to me: "The food which I get by begging is divine."
After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we are apt to regard it as ours by right.
I had a great desire to ask her about her husband. But as she never mentioned him even indirectly, I did not question her.
I found out very soon that the Devotee had no respect at all for that part of the village where the people of the higher castes lived.
"They never give," she said, "a single farthing to God's service; and yet they have the largest share of God's glebe. But the poor worship and starve."