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."




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