"It is true!" he replied, in a dull, despairing voice that in itself should have been convincing if she could have brought herself to believe in such a thing; but she fought against it, and refused to entertain the idea. "Who dares to say that our son has become a Christian?" she asked fiercely. "His own tongue. He calls himself by the accursed name, and he shows no shame." "A Christian! a Christian!" echoed voices round him. "A Christian! a Christian!" was caught up by the women and repeated with increasing excitement. "Oh! Aiyoh! Aiyoh! Aiyoh!" The cry came from Gunga herself. It dominated the chorus of lamentation and silenced every other tongue. Suddenly the sound of a thud upon the floor startled the company. A childish scream followed. "Water! bring water!" said one of the women. "The lady Dorama has fainted and let the child fall!" CHAPTER VII Ananda stood at the open door of the little room looking out at the view. The earth was smiling under the tropical sun. Birds and flowers responded to its tempered heat; and song and sweet odours were lavishly spent upon the soft air. An oleander bush with its willow foliage tossed trusses of almond-scented, pink blossom, at the entrance of the yard. The luxuriant vine of a gourd spread its thick leafage over a part of the ground enclosed. Just outside a rose bush, laden with clusters of blossoms and buds, threw its thorny branches over the warm, sunbaked, mud wall. A pair of tawny fritillary butterflies fluttered over the petals of the rose, and a blue roller bird flew across the sky, a living streak of brilliant azure upon the ethereal blue haze. Crested hoopoes ran along the base of the wall seeking ants and cooing softly in their contentment. Above foliage, flower and building rose the noble mountain mass in the distance, with its sholahs of virgin forest, its glades and slopes of green grass and peaks of bare grey rock. Ananda's spirit stirred within him as his eye followed the familiar outline of the beautiful spur of the Western Ghats. How often he had watched it under its different aspects and learned to love it, whether it was shrouding itself in a grey mantle of rain-laden vapour, or shining through a transparent haze of blue.