After college came marriage to a man connected with the family of a well known rajah. The husband was not only the holder of a University degree similar to her own, but a zealous social reformer, eloquent in his advocacy of women's freedom. Life promised well for Rukkubai. A year or two later a friend visited her behind the purdah, with the doors of the world shut in her face. The zeal of the reforming husband could not stand against the petty persecutions of the older women of the family. "I wish," said Rukkubai, "that I had never known freedom. Now I have known--and lost." [Illustration: WILL LIFE BE KIND TO HER?] Yet not all reformers are such. There are an increasing number whose deeds keep pace with their words. Such may be found among the members of The Servants of India Society, who spend part of the year in social studies; the remainder in carrying to ignorant people the message they have learned. Such is the heritage of the Hindu woman of ancient freedom; centuries when traditions of repression have gripped with ever-tightening hold; to-day a new ferment in the blood, a new striving toward purposes half realized. Of to-morrow, who can say? The future is hidden, but the chapters that follow may perhaps serve to bring us into touch with a few of the many forces that are helping to shape the day that shall be. [Footnote 1: History of India, E.W. Thompson. Christian Literature Society, London and Madras, pp. 11-12.] [Footnote 2: Outline of History, H.G. Wells. Vol. I, pp. 146-8.] [Footnote 3: Outline of History, H.G. Wells, Vol. I, pp. 196-199.] [Footnote 4: Outline of History, H.G. Wells, Vol. I, pp. 189-190.] [Footnote 5: Ancient Times, Breasted, pp. 658-9.] [Footnote 6: Code of Manu, Book 9, quoted Lux Christi, Mason, p. 14.] [Footnote 7: India through the Ages, Florence Annie Steele, Routledge, pp. 95-104, 116-18.] [Footnote 8: India through the Ages, pp. 190-200] CHAPTER TWO AT SCHOOL Hindu or Christian. In the last chapter we have spoken of the Hindu girl as yet untouched by Christianity, save as such influence may have filtered through into the general life of the nation. We have had vague glimpses of her social inheritance, with its traditions of an ancient and honorable estate of womanhood; of the limitations of her life to-day; of her half-formed aspirations for the future. Of education as such nothing has been said. As we turn now from home to school life, we shall turn also from the Hindu community to the Christian. This does not mean that none but Christian girls go to school. In all the larger and more advanced cities and in some towns you will find Government schools for Hindu girls as well as those carried on by private enterprise, some of them of great efficiency. Yet this deliberate turning to the school life of the Christian community is not so arbitrary as it seems.