* * * * * Even as one looks the illusions of vision are fading, steeple, trees, house-tops, are only blurs of grayness, and the other voice of prayer smites the stillness--“There is no God, but God”.... Beware, beware of resisting Fate; beware, there is who kills and who makes alive. None may oppose Him; why break the Lightning? * * * * * Oh! the time Between the Twilights is good: one floats on the sea of silence, and is nothing--just part of the Great Creation--absolutely at rest, at one with Nature, at peace with one’s self, with one’s neighbour. Shall we remember in the next House, the furnishings of this? I asked of my Wisest of the Wise. “It will be as you desire, as you intend,” was the answer; and then, musingly, “Most wish to forget, most wish to forget.” ... There is in her the strangest mixture of ritual and freedom from ritual. That is because she is a woman. Hinduism, as we find it in India now, is but a tradition, of which the women keep the record. You may believe what you will, there are no articles of belief, there are idols for the ignorant, there is poetry, allegory, which you may interpret as you will; there are the beautiful songs of the _Bhagavad Gita_, there is the propitiation of evil spirits, there are the extortions of the ash-smeared; there is the ecstasy of the wife-worship of Life, of her husband, her child. There is the crown of self-sacrifice, and there is the demand of the stronger for the service of the weaker. All stand for Hinduism; but none connote Hinduism. Of its essence is caste ... and here we are back again at our marriage register. The one fear of the Hindu is, lest so-and-so will not marry into his family. If he does that which would prevent marriage he has ceased to be a Hindu.... And the things which might prove a bar to marriage among Westerns do not of necessity prove here a bar to marriage. There is no excommunication for sin; there is excommunication, out-casting for breach of a ceremonial rule. The man under Western influence may be ashamed of a son-in-law who has served his time for a crime. Not so the orthodox Hindu: has he not paid the penalty for his sin, why cast it up against him? That account is closed. If you wish to know what things would out-caste, ask the women. They have learned from their grandmothers, and they from theirs.