Sierras of tragedy are pictured in the eyes of the starving. Processes of decay are intricate and marvellous--like the impulses of growth and replenishing. There is no dissolution which so masterfully paints itself in the human eye as Hunger. The ball is lit with the expiration of the body, filled with a smoky glow of destroying tissue. The unutterable mysteries of consummation are windowed there. The body dies, member by member; all flesh save the binding fibres wastes away, and the hideous hectic story of it all is told in the widening, ever widening eyes--even to the glow of the burning-ghats--all is there. And the mother’s eyes! She was already old in the hunger-lesson. The husband, Madan Das; the leper, his brother; the two little girls; the little brass bowl--all were gone, when this child ceased to feed upon the mother’s flesh. And still she crawled with the last of her body to the town--all for this little son of Madan Das, who slept the sleep of healing within reach of her arm. Routledge gazed upon the great passion of motherhood. In truth, the little hut in Rydamphur had been to him a place of unfolding revelations. He had seen much of death in wars, but this war was so poignant, so intimate.... Why did the woman sin? Routledge’s tired brain forged its own answer on the vast Hindu plan of triple evolution. Countless changes had carried this creature, as he himself had been carried, up from a worm to a human. It is a long journey begun in darkness, and only through error, and the pains of error, does the soul-fragment learn to distinguish between the vile and the beautiful. In the possession of refining senses, and the travail of their conquering, the soul whitens and expands. Often the wild horses of the senses burst out of control of the charioteer of the soul; and for each rushing violence, the price must be paid in pangs of the body--until there are no longer lessons of the flesh to be learned, and the soul puts on its misery no more.... Routledge came up to blow, like a leviathan, from the deeps of reflection, and wondered at the feverish energy of his brain. “I shall be analyzing presently the properties which go into the crucible for the making of a prophet,” he declared. The servant had brought a doctor, but it was mere formality. Routledge bent over the dying woman. Her heart filled the hut with its pounding. It ran swift and loud, like a ship’s screw, when the clutching Pacific rollers fall away. In that devouring heat, the chill settled. “Do not forget.... He is the son of Madan Das, and I am his mother----” “I shall not forget, good mother,” Routledge whispered. “A worthy man shall take care of him. This, first of all, shall I attend.” “Madan Das was a worthy man----”