"You can not think I am pleading with you to save our lives," Carmichael went on with grave dignity. "We have fought for them. An hour ago we were prepared to lay them down without complaint. We are not the less prepared now. It is not for us I am speaking, but for you. Your day as Rajah is over--your claim to rule in India void. I offer you instead your father's name, your father's people, your father's heritage. The other road--well, you have trodden it, you know it. You must choose. Your mother chose--twenty-five years ago, in the same hour of crisis, blinded by the same bitterness. She chose to tear the bonds of love and duty; she ignored the true voice of her instinct. It broke her heart. The same crisis stands to-night before you, her son. What will you do--Steven Caruthers?" The Rajah lifted his head. The struggle was written in his dark, sunken eyes and on the compressed lips. "I can not desert them," he said wearily. "They trust me--my people trust me." "Who are your people?" was the swift question. "You must choose." Again the same silence, the same waiting while the hand of fate seemed to hover above them in the darkness. Beatrice left her place at the dead woman's side. With a firm, proud step she came to the Rajah and took his hand in both her own. He started at her touch, and for a long minute his gaze seemed to sink itself in hers, but she never wavered. When she spoke an immeasurable tenderness rang in her voice, a boundless understanding and sympathy. "Steven--have you forgotten? Long ago in the old temple? Don't you remember what you told me then--how you loved and admired us? You called us the world's Great People, and when you spoke of our heroes there was something in your voice which thrilled me. Was it only your books, was it your teachers--Behar Singh--who made you feel as you did? When you came among us, what led you? The face of a woman? Was it only that? Or was it something more?--the call of a great, wonderful instinct?"