Ananda did not reply. His father's eyes searched his face with undisguised anxiety for sign of a favourable response. He only saw a tightening of the lower lip and slight protruding of the jaw with an unconscious toss of the head. He remembered the trick of old and all that it implied. The deep underlying obstinacy that had ever been the one fault of the boy was still there ready to uphold new beliefs, prematurely formed in his father's opinion and without sufficient consideration. His heart sank within him and he was silent during the rest of the way. They arrived at the house and mounted the steps that led up to the front door. The door was closed and the verandah was empty. Pantulu took his seat upon a broad bench and drew his feet up beneath him. It was as Gunga had said, just under a window. He signed to his son to sit on the same bench by his side. "No harm will have been done by your having called yourself a Christian in a foreign land," continued Pantulu, resolutely looking away from his companion's face, that he might not be discouraged by what was so manifest there. "The ceremonies will be of a character to restore you even if you have sinned greatly. I have money enough to satisfy the purohits. There are worse offences than the one you have committed. You have not killed a Brahman, for instance." "I told you, oh excellent father, that having taken this step there is no going back," said Ananda, at last, in a low voice. "I say there is; there must be a going back. Your deeds can be undone, expiated. Listen!" Pantulu controlled his excitement and continued more quietly. "Listen, my son. Let me put before you all that it means if you refuse to come back to us. Who is to perform the funeral rites at my death if you cannot be chief mourner? Are they to be left unperformed? Is my spirit to wander as a wretched ghost and be born again as an unhappy contemptible pariah or beast because my son refuses to fulfil his duties?" "You will never be born again on this earth, my father; you will never become a man or a beast again," cried Ananda, his eyes aglow with enthusiasm. "The man-God of the Christians came to open men's eyes to better things, to assure the world of immediate pardon for sin, and to promise a happiness after death far exceeding any earthly happiness. Think what a glorious future He offers to us in place of the hopeless cycles of rebirths." Pantulu shook his head in perplexity, not without fear at the blasphemy against Hinduism that fell upon his startled ears. "Our faith was ancient before ever the man-God of the Christians was born. Were the millions, who lived and died before His time, living and dying in error?"