It is a lawful adventure, and for some it is an absolute duty, to follow and challenge the Presence in word and deed. Englishmen who live in her shadow have sometimes for their honour to grasp and defy her; to assume that they are bound to question her authority. India for all her unknown terror has to be wrestled with for the blessing that England requires upon the labour of the English. Though the Gods of India are sacred, the devils of India, filthy and lawless, must be driven out. When India put the mark of the beast upon Fleete the powers of darkness had of necessity to be brought to heel, and this story may be read as a parable. The mark of the beast, wherever it may appear, is the Imperial concern of the English in India. But a warning enters here. Mr Kipling, celebrating Imperial India, has shown us the English at close war with the India of black magic and secret murder, of cruelty and fear. But he has balanced the account. There is another set of stories, showing us how the white man comes to disaster, who, not content with his exact and simple duty, insolently overleaps the breach between East and West--the breach which Mr Kipling himself so scrupulously observes. There was Trajego: "He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never do so again." His story is entitled _Beyond the Pale_, and is to be found among _Plain Tales from the Hills_. There is also _The Man Who Would Be King_. He, too, neglected the barriers. India may be ruled by the resolute and challenged by the brave; but India may never be embraced. India, who strikes out of a brazen sky; who poisons with her infected breath and is served to the death without reward; who physically cows her people with dust and fever and heat, and is possessed with devils who must be pacified; where successive civilisations have left their bones upon the soil and a hundred religions have decayed, leaving the old air heavy with exhalations--this India slowly takes shape in Mr Kipling's native stories. Her physical immensity and pressure is felt in stories like _The End of the Passage_ and _William the Conqueror_. Her sleepless tyranny, which has made men intricate and incalculable, driving them to subterranean ways of thought and fancy, rules in every page of a tale like _The Return of Imray_. Imray was an amiable Englishman who incautiously patted the head of his servant's child. Bahadur Khan speaks of it thus to Strickland of the Police: "'Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever, my child!' "'What said Imray Sahib?'