Despite the mission school training which is the foundation-culture of nearly all young India, his religion was a mere ethical sense, an emotional yielding to the attraction of everything to which the epithet 'Higher' could be applied--mathematics and morals alike. And the giving-in to the disgusting rites necessary before he could re-enter native society on equal terms with those, even, who were of lower caste than himself, had seemed to him degrading. So, despite his mother's prayers and the advice of other men who, in like position, had purchased comfort by acquiescence, he had refused to be made clean on the offered terms. With this result, that the only familiar touch left to him was that which this woman in the _demi-mondaine_ pink negligé laid on his shoulder as, after a time, she flung the note down on the table, and with a tolerant laugh paused beside him on her way from the room. 'Don't be a fool, Chris!' she said cheerfully. 'You can't be expected to understand, of course, so I'm not really angry. It is all right, old man. Heaps of English women do that sort of thing; and I'm going to, anyhow, so it's no good fussing.' He made no reply. He seemed, even to himself, to have nothing to say; nothing that could be said, at any rate, since the fierce claim for silence and submission (even if it entailed the disposal of a corpse!) which he had inherited from his fathers, had to be smothered. So he only stared at the note, which lay face uppermost. It began 'Dearest Jenny'; and _he_ called his wife Viva! The difference of style epitomised the situation, since she preferred the Jenny; it reminded her of bank clerks and the top of the Hammersmith omnibus. He realised this now, for he was no fool; only a reader of books, a believer in theories, a dreamer of dreams, who, in the almost brutal blaze of an Indian sun, had awakened, not to realities--that was impossible to one who still had no guide save books--but to a new attempt at dreams. One which made him say pompously, after the fashion in novels, 'I do not wish it, Viva; and you will please to remember that I am your husband.' His English, barring a faintly foreign intonation, was perfect; but his wife laughed. 'Don't, Chris! It doesn't suit the part. Besides, we were only married at the registrar's. So if you want a wife of that sort, Lucanaster says you can marry one, if I don't object. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I should----' He stood up and threw his hands out passionately ere covering his face with them; and the action, utterly un-English as it was, suited him better than his previous calm. 'It--it's a lie to begin with,' he cried hoarsely. 'And even if it weren't--I wont have it said--it--it makes me lose myself.'