Ten years glided away. Oman was more than forty, and Bhavani about fifty-five. To the worker among men the time had seemed longer than that spent on the Silver Peak. There he had, after a little, won faith in himself. Here he came gradually to perceive that he was accomplishing nothing of that which he had set out to do. Little by little he was made to realize that those who are wholly of the world can get no help out of the great, abstract truths: the high standard of religion. This at last he perceived. But he would stoop to no creed petty enough to catch the belief of his people. It was, indeed, only what is discovered by all men who seek to bring high truths home to narrow minds:—that the great, polluted religions have, by slow process of retrograde development, been constituted by the masses for the masses, who must thenceforth only be left alone to peck over and over the heap of chaff from which the last kernels of truth have been long since snatched away. Fortunately, during this period of thankless labor, Oman had not lost touch with a wider world. Bhavani and Zenaide, the man and the woman, were still his refuge. To them he carried some of his weariness, and from them got constant renewal and refreshment. Their lives had become tranquil,—singularly so, indeed. Only Bhavani, as he grew older, sometimes chafed at the thought that he alone, of all Manduvian rulers, had been peaceful, had brought no glories of conquest and plunder home to his people. He fretted lest Mandu’s prestige had been dimmed by his policy; though he could not deny that he had trebled the strength of his kingdom in wealth and in population. “Ah,” he would sometimes say, “at my death the country will be fit for Viradha’s rule. He will find her ready to give him soldiers and gold for his wars. He will be what my father was. With all thy teachings, Oman, thou hast never eradicated in him the warrior spirit.” And Oman would shake his head, his eyes growing sad; for he was not a lover of war.