His American-trained mind scoffed against the thing that had happened, but his heart held on serenely.... What did this little world-warrior with the battered mouth know about love and living with a woman? What did he know about lusts that he spoke so freely of? Did he ever give three years of his life to the one battle--not to hate the woman he loved most under heaven? Or was that particular battle so far back in his experience that he merely spoke of it as one skirmish in the great campaign of fifty years, called Life? Alone at dinner at the _Entresden_, Dicky conned every word the Little Man had spoken about the young married people who worked together in the _Ashrama_, of the celibacy they vowed themselves to, of their becoming through marriage “friends in a special sense--for this and all lives.” Yes, Gandhi talked as if it were a foregone conclusion that there were other lives.... He wasn’t tasting his dinner.... He came up from the deeps of reflection to realize a waiter was coming toward him, as if in answer to a signal. He also discovered that he had been sitting over his filled plate with one hand lifted--the thumb and fingers brushing together, as if he were close to _her_, and it was a bit of her dress or a wisp of her hair between his fingers. His mind could scoff all it pleased, for his heart held serenely to the miracle, and this was the miracle: that Pidge Musser, married or not married, was back alive in his heart; and such a melting pity for her plight had come to him as he sat before the Little Man, that he, the hardheaded, had to rise abruptly from the interview and rush away, lest he fall to weeping and explaining all. XXVIII THE RACK OF SEX DICKY and Nagar sat under the _punkahs_ in the room at the _Entresden_--that stillest, hottest night. A fierce stimulus was driving the American. Moment by moment he realized it more clearly--that his love had come back to him, or some strange new fire from it, as he had talked with Mahatma-ji. It compelled him, mind and emotion now, and his questions were insatiable, but he was slow and roundabout in getting to the core of matters that fascinated. “For instance, what makes him starve himself?” Dicky asked. “He has no illusions about fasting,” Nagar answered. “Mahatma-ji objects to the distractions of the body. He keeps down this drum of the senses by severity of handling, an old well-tried way of the East. Ask an expert horseman what to do with a spirited saddle horse that has a tendency now and then to take the bit and run away. ‘Cut down his grain, and he will be easier to handle,’ you will be told.” Dicky was groping feverishly within himself as the other talked. “But what has celibacy to do----” he halted and finished, “with politics and all that?”