So, once more, the Swâmi's voice came, still dignified, but with a trace of cunning in it now, of argument. 'Thou canst not do it unaided, Krishn; but with us behind thee--giving more freedom, remember, that the herd knows or dreams--thou couldst have thy wish--thou couldst teach the people.' True. Chris, listening, saw this, even as he saw that scarlet streak; but all the while he was thinking idly that if Naraini were doomed to widowhood, the bridal scarlet would never be hers. And yet he forgot even this when the Swâmi struck another string deftly. 'Our best disciples leave us'--the rhythm grew fateful, mournful.--'The new wisdom takes them soul and body ere they have learned to unhusk the old, and find its heart. But thou hast found it. Come back to us and teach us! For day by day the husk hides more. Even on the river, Krishn, where the old sanctuaries of the Godhead in Man and Woman stand side by side, the younger priests quarrel over Her power and His. As if the Man and the Woman were not, together, the Eternal Mind and Body! And the quarrel grows keen, like many another in those days; keener than ever since the golden paper fell, prophesying blood upon Her Altar. Lies, Krishn, lies! we know them so; but we are driven to them to keep our hold upon the people. What other hold have we but ignorance, if young wisdom leaves us?' Chris gave a sort of inarticulate cry, and his hands rose passionately to his ears as if to shut out the words which were enlisting all things that were good in him on the side of something which he still condemned. But, as he stopped his ears despairingly, a sound came which no hand could quite shut out. It was the clang of the temple bell, proclaiming that the Eucharist of Hindooism was ready for communicants; that the Water of Life which had touched the gods was waiting for those who thirsted for it. Muffled, half heard, it seemed to vibrate afresh on every tense nerve of his mind and body. He stood up dazed, half hypnotised by it, by the figure--a dim shadow of a man that had risen also, smiling softly, among the dim arches. 'Come, my son,' it said, 'so far thou _art_ with us! Let the rest be for a while. But this, stripped of its husk, is thine.--Come!' And as it passed silently into the courtyard, Chris passed too, lost in the familiar unfamiliarity of all things. Of the clustering spikes of the temples seen against the primrose sky; of the drifting hint of incense shut in by the arcades; of the bare empty silence broken only by that clanging bell. The scarlet streak was passing outwards, already sanctified, approved. Others would come, but for the moment there was solitude; save for that half-dozen of indifferent disciples droning over their devotions, and the officiating priest, unseen within the temple.