Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/174

154 leaves and brown flowering spirals, struggling upwards to the light.

“Forget not the perfume of the Tulsi. The customs of your race, in marrying, in dying, in loving …” sang my friend. “It means all that to us who sprinkle it with water in the morning.”

But in my little garden there was no holy Tulsi to sprinkle with water in the morning! Transplanting suiteth not the aged: and the friend of the Garden-people appeared before me sad and shaven.

“My Mother is dead, and at my hands: have I leave to carry her to the waters of oblivion?”

Leave, of course: but let the blame be rightly fixed; not the worshipper, but the Huzoor, she who ordered, carried the sin. This did not satisfy, as I would have wished: and it was not till many days later that the faithful slave brought me a cleared brow, and his mountain top of philosophy.

“But to him who does not deem it sin it is not sin.”