But to Ommony the interest increased. The girls in white threw black cloaks over their shoulders. The Hindu and Moslem women smothered themselves in the impenetrable veils without which it is pollution to face men-folk out-of-doors; and all of them, in groups of three or four, each little group in charge of one of the Lama’s female family, who shielded their faces in masked hoods that formed part of the black cloaks, departed toward the street.
There was no doubt that they did go to the street; a door opened on to a vestibule, and sunlight shone through a street door at its farther end.
Samding returned up the steps and gave the piece of jade to the Lama, who stowed it somewhere in his bosom without glancing at it. Ommony watched the chela narrowly. Was he a European boy? There was something in the clean strong outline of his face and in the lithe athletic figure that might suggest that. But he was too abstract-looking—altogether too impersonal and (the word was as vague as the impression Ommony was trying to fix in his mind) too fascinating. No European youngster could have looked as he did without stirring resentment in whoever watched. Samding aroused in the beholder only admiration and an itching curiosity.
[32] Sudra: the lowest of the four great Hindu castes, which in fact, although not always in theory, includes many of the merchants and artizen classes, and some agriculturists.
THE LAMA’S LAW
O ye who look to enter in through Discipline to Bliss,
Ye shall not stray from out the way, if ye remember this:
Ye shall not waste a weary hour, nor hope for Hope in vain,