“All the time, until I left for this great meeting I had expected that somehow, some way, all would be well. Some time suddenly you would come away. You would understand and burst your bonds and come to us—to me. But as I left America fear entered my heart—fear for your soul. I began to feel that I must act—I must take the step, I must rescue you from the net in which you were floundering.
“I remember the day. Gloom of fog held back the March spring in London. The crowded, winding streets echoed with traffic. I heard Big Ben knelling the hour of noon, and a ray of sunlight struggled dizzily on the mauve Thames. A wireless came. You were selling your soul for Congress.
“Before, you had stolen for others. You had upheld their lies—but your own hands were clean, your heart disclaimed the dirty game. Now you were going to lie and steal for yourself. I saw the end of our world. I must rescue you at any cost—at any sacrifice. I rushed back across the sea. Five days we shivered, rolled, and darted through the storm. Almost we cut a ship in two on the Newfoundland banks, but wrenched away with a mighty groan. I landed Friday morning, and left at two-fifty-five—at nine next morning I was in Chicago. That night I led your soul up from Purgatory—free!
“And here we are, Matthew, my love; and it is long past the hour of sleep; and you are trembling with apprehension at things which did not happen, at pits into which I did not fall, at failures over which we both have triumphed.”
The Princess paused, and Matthew started up. There was a loud insistent knocking at the door.
“Go,” said the Princess. “Have we not both expected this?”
Matthew hesitated a moment and then walked to the door and opened it. A colored police officer and two white men in citizens’ clothes stepped in quickly and started as if to search, until they saw the Princess sitting on the disheveled bed.
“Well?”
“We were hunting for you two,” said one of the plainclothes men.
“And you have found us?” asked Matthew.
“Yes, evidently. We wondered where you were spending the night.”
“We were spending the night here, together,” said Matthew.
“Together,” repeated the Princess.
The other man began to write furiously.
“You admit that,” said the first man.
“We admit it,” said Matthew, and the Princess bowed her head.
“Perhaps we had better look around a little,” said the other man tentatively. But the policeman protested.
“You got what you wanted, ain’t ya? Mr. Towns is a friend of mine, and I don’t propose to have no monkey business. If you’re through, get out.” And slowly they all passed through the door.
III
May, and five o’clock in the morning. The sun was whispering to the night, and the mist of its words rose above the park. Matthew and Kautilya swung rapidly along through the dim freshness of the day. They both had knapsacks and knickerbockers, and shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, and singing low snatches of song, they hurried through Jackson Park. It was such a morning as when the world began: soft with breezes, warm yet cold, brilliant with the sun, and still dripping with the memory of sweet, clean rain. There was no dust—no noise, no movement. Almost were the great brown earth and heavy, terrible city, still. Singing, quivering, tense with awful happiness, they went through the world. Far out by the lake and in the drowsy afternoon, when they had eaten sausage and bread and herbs and drunk cool water, after Kautilya had read the sacred words of the Rig-veda, she laid aside the books and talked again, straining his back against her knees as they sat beneath a black oak tree, her cheek beside his ear, while together they stared out upon the waving waters of Lake Michigan.
Matthew said:
“Now tell me beautiful things, Scheherazade. Who you are and what? And from what fairyland you came?”
“I cannot tell you, Matthew, for you do not know India. Oh, my dear one, you must know India.
“India! India! Out of black India the world was born. Into the black womb of India the world shall creep to die. All that the world has done, India did, and that more marvelously, more magnificently. The loftiest of mountains, the mightiest of rivers, the widest of plains, the broadest of oceans—these are India.
“Man is there of every shape and kind and hue, and the animal friends of man, of every sort conceivable. The drama of life knows India as it knows no other land, from the tragedy of Almighty God to the laugh of the Bandar-log; from divine Gotama to the sons of Mahmoud and the stepsons of the Christ.
“For leaf and sun, for whiff and whirlwind; for laughter, and for tears; for sacrifice and vision; for stark poverty and jeweled wealth; for toil and song and silence—for all this, know India. Loveliest and weirdest of lands; terrible with flame and ice, beautiful with palm and pine, home of pain and happiness and misery—oh, Matthew, can you not understand? This is India—can you not understand?”
“No, I cannot understand; but I feel your meaning.”
“True, true! India must be felt. No man can know India, and yet the shame of it, that men may today be counted learned and yet be ignorant, carelessly ignorant, of India. The shame, that this vast center of human life should be but the daubed footstool of a stodgy island of shopkeepers born with seas and hearts of ice.”
“But you know India, darling. Tell India to the world.”
“I am India. Forgive
