A little in front of them a woman of thirty or more, exquisitely dressed
in summer white, pretty and complacent, leaned back in her chair.
Happening to catch Percival's eye he looked inquiry.
"Mrs. Appleton," whispered that young man, and lifted his eyebrows as
if to express astonished admiration, then made a wry face. Norris smiled
his understanding and glanced back at the self-satisfied prosperity
beneath her filmy hat. Then, suddenly, at the far end of the room,
another face caught him--a profile of a girl's head, outlined against a
high bench-back, her dreamy eyes fixed on the speaker. It was a
cameo-like face, not animated, but delicate and finely lined. Norris
knew her in a flash. This was the girl whose photograph had stood on
Dick's mantel at college and of whom Dick had sometimes spoken in those
rare intimate hours when he talked of his mother or of his purposes in
life. Ellery forgot the rest of the room and watched her until a sudden
forward lunge of Mrs. Appleton's hat shut her off, and brought him back
to consciousness of the place and the supposed interests of the day. He
turned back with a sigh to Ram Juna, telling himself with some amusement
that other minds than his own were wandering far afield, and that the
attitude of polite interest came as much from the conviction that
Esoteric Buddhism was "the thing," as from any real absorption.
Already the Hindu had been talking to them for an hour. His speech had
that precision and purity both of word and of enunciation by which a
foreigner, trained in our classics, often shames our slovenly every-day
English. He spoke, not as one who wishes to convert others to his own
point of view, but, rather, as though unconscious of their presence, he
poured out the fullness of his meditations in self-communion. The
upward-turned eyes were half closed. Occasionally there was a flicker of
the eyelids or a touch of scorn when he contrasted the eastern ideal of
eternal repose with the western reality of endless struggle. Then for a
moment he seemed to realize the presence of his auditors, ashamed now of
their telephones, their public schools and even of their philanthropies,
in the face of this supreme contempt for the things that fade.
Suddenly he opened wide his great eyes.
"And you," he said, "you, with your guns, your armies and your
ignorances, you think to rule us. Well, so be it! We grant to you
dominion as a man gives to a child the sticks and straws for which it
loudly clamors in its petty plays. But our treasures are the higher
thoughts which alone are worthy of the man. These we reserve."