Bopaul glanced at the peaceful face of his friend when he rejoined him on deck after the service, and wondered if Ananda realised what was before him. Of a nature inclined to shrink from any violent display of emotion, how would he meet the turbulent passions that would be roused in every member of his family as soon as the news was told. Did he realise all that was involved? He had been well instructed in the doctrines of Hinduism by his guru; and he had duly performed the various ceremonies prescribed at different periods of childhood and youth by the laws of his religion. What thought was it that stirred in his mind as he leaned on the taffrail and looked pensively down at the seething white froth churned by the passage of the big ship through the waters of the Indian Ocean? Bopaul would have lifted his eyebrows in amused surprise could he have seen the figure that filled the mental vision of his friend. It was none other than Dorama, the young wife to whom after a long absence he was returning. When the marriage took place bride and bridegroom were but children. The depths of their emotions were unruffled by the honeymoon which was spent, according to custom, three years later under the paternal roof. Two or three years of placid married life followed, during which Ananda was still absorbed in his studies, and Dorama was engaged in housewifely duties under the supervision of an autocratic mother-in-law, who was not unkind, but rigidly exacting, with no leaning whatever towards modern innovations. Then came the birth of the son. Ananda found it a little difficult to believe that he had really attained the much-desired estate of paternity. He let his eyes rest on the girl-mother and his child with wondrous delight. The sight of them stirred him strangely, and awoke new longings that he did not understand. Those longings were the instinctive desires of the animal man to claim his mate for himself; and to carry her and her baby to some remote fastness, where he could hide her from the swarms of relatives who in their joy seemed to think that she belonged to them rather than to him. He wanted to gloat over her beauty, her wifehood and her motherhood, and to exult in sole possession. What did it mean? It almost awed him in its strength and insistence. Surely he was not rebelling against the time-honoured custom of the family life! He was not seeking to leave the home of his fathers! Then came the journey to England and the separation. The underlying, scarcely recognised discontent vanished with the excitement of travel; but the memory of Dorama in her new character did not fade. On the contrary, it grew clearer and more beautiful the longer he cherished it, gathering romance and raising the wife far above all other women.