'I cannot send that one, anyhow,' he said to himself as he tore it up. But he felt as if he could send nothing--that he could never give another thought to such things. For Naraini had needed comfort, and he had given it to her. But he could not even think of her; a profound physical content lulled him to a dreamless sleep, his last thought, ere that sleep claimed him, being that he had not felt so happy for years. CHAPTER XX THE OLD WINE Chris woke suddenly, and yet without that sense of dislocation which such awakening often brings with it. The vast content that had been his in falling asleep was his still, as with eyes which seemed to him to have grown clear of dreams he lay smiling at what he saw, though that was only a wide, empty, whitewashed room with many window-doors set open to the dawn; and through these, nothing but a strip of mud roof; and beyond that again, the broad blades of the plantain leaves shining grey-green in the grey light. A slight breeze swayed them, and rustled in the frayed straws of the rude matting with which the floor was covered. But that louder, more intermittent rustle was not the wind. It was the patter of a bird's feet. And there, with tail erect on the coping, clear against the glistening grey-green leaves, which swayed like sea-weeds in a swift tide, a striped squirrel was breakfasting on some treasure-trove. Chris filled his lungs with a long 'breath. He was back in the old world; the world where all living things are alike mortal, where even man is as the flower that fadeth, the beast that perisheth. And the old way was better. So far he had gone, when the consciousness that he was not alone--that strange consciousness of humanity which, be the old way never so charming, separates men from it inevitably--came to him, and he sat up on the low string cot, set so regardless of symmetry just where it had first been dumped down in the room. His instinct had been right. A figure had been seated, unmovable as a statue, just behind his head; but as he turned it turned also, and held out a folded paper. The figure was that of a young man about his own age and of much the same build, but guiltless of clothing save for a saffron-coloured waist-cloth. The forehead was barred with white lines, and a leopard's skin hung over the shoulder. Palpably this was the disciple of some learned ascetic, as he, Chris, would have been, had not the West interfered with custom. The thought made him smile, but the face opposite his remained grave, almost disapproving; the figure rose without a word, turned on its heel, and disappeared. Chris, left with the paper in his hand, felt as if a message had been sent to him from another world; felt so still more when he had read the broad black Sanskrit lettering inside. 'Thy _guru_ calls thee'--it ran--'come, ere it be too late.'