Bhavani, indeed, spite of many evil influences that surrounded his youth, had grown into a beautiful manhood. From some unknown source he had gained that kind of spirituality that is not inherited, and yet is scarcely to be acquired. His father before him had been high judge of his people. Bhavani was their friend. If Rai-Khizar-Pál had been absolutely just, Bhavani was more than that: he was charitable. The old Rajah had been most of all a warrior, loving the sound of battle, first for himself, and afterward for the glory it would bring his people. Bhavani hated war, because it carried with it death; and for death he cherished a horror of which he never spoke. It had been born in the moment when, stealthily following Kasya and Churi in their dread morning’s search, he had looked on the body of Ragunáth, stiff and bloody, under the champaks near the water-palace, where he had himself left the Lady Ahalya the evening before. No one had ever got Bhavani to tell what he knew of the happenings of that night. In the beginning, he did not himself understand the part he had played in the tragedy; but the horror of it was rooted deep in his secret soul. And, little by little, as he came to manhood, he began to realize something of the drama that had been played before his childlike innocence; though, with strange perversity, his interpretation did injustice to the slave. And the memory of the two he had loved, Ahalya and Fidá, became embittered; for he endured for them all the shame that they had never known themselves. The influence of this dreadful incident of his childhood had had an incalculable effect on his character. To it Mandu owed the fastidiousness of this beloved ruler. There was but one misdeed in the calendar of crime toward which Bhavani was immovably severe. By him adulterers were punished to the fullest extent of the law. Nor had he ever been known to consider an extenuating circumstance. He was himself a man of the most rigid chastity; and, though he conformed so much to custom as to marry while still very young, he had but one wife, attended by women only. And, there being no zenana in his palace, he employed no eunuchs elsewhere.