The _Entresden_ was not crowded and Dicky obtained comfortable quarters in a northeast room where the upholstering was covered in clean tan linen, and the _punkahs_ showed signs of life immediately upon their entrance. Nagar prepared to leave as soon as Dicky sat down in the air crossing between two shaded windows. “I will come for you this afternoon if you wish to go to the _Ashrama_ to-day,” he said. “It is some distance from the center of the city.” “Sit down, Nagar; don’t hurry off.” “I thought you would prefer to rest until after _tiffin_.” “Stay and we’ll have it here. You’ll pour the tea like the old days in Miss Claes’ room.” Nagar’s face was in the shadows, but there was a soft shining as of polished silver in or around his eyes. At times, shutting his eyes as Nagar spoke, Dicky could almost believe he was back in the basement at Harrow Street. The way Nagar said to him, “my friend,” was almost Miss Claes herself. That was the poignant part of finding the Oriental again; that he brought back Harrow Street--even moments under the white light. The day would have been joyous but for the aching emptiness of heart. Dicky asked tirelessly about Gandhi, especially since it gave him such a chance to study the new Nagar. “Mahatma-ji has burned away all waste,” Nagar said at length. “He has narrowed himself down, body and mind, to an almost perfect obedience--self-control. He measures action to all his words. The best he knows, step by step, he performs.” “Where did you hear of him first?” “Here in India--of his work in South Africa. I went there to know him better--followed the gleam, as you might say. I stayed four years. It was he who encouraged me to go to America to study more of the spirit of the West.” “What’s Gandhi’s message to these people?” “He believes that politics cannot be successfully divorced from religion,” Nagar said. “His message always is toward the spiritualizing of India’s political life and her institutions. The spiritual predominance of India, which he idealizes as being the real destiny of India, can only be effected by her rebecoming herself, by the return of the Motherland into herself, by her ceasing to imitate all the ways of western civilization.” “But if she returns into herself, making her own goods, cutting herself off from all institutions of the present government--England will be done for here.” Nagar bowed without the trace of a smile. “I’ve heard that every turn of a spinning-wheel in India takes part of a turn from a power loom in Manchester,” Dicky added. Nagar further acquiesced. “And that isn’t politics?... I think I’ll go in for religion, myself.” * * * * * “It is very good to have you here,” Nagar said later. “Mahatma-ji will also be glad. He has asked much about you and believes that you may be a means of making many in America understand. It is a saying with us here that ‘to understand is to love.’”