Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/208

188 curious as to the faith that was in her, but she heeded them not; day after day through tracks of burning sand, through jungle or by river bed … and at last the temple was in sight.

The miracle was that her faith failed not when her tongue did not grow. After the first shock of realization, her mind groped after some explanation which satisfied, and the God lost no worshipper.

So, in Western India, I have known one—a Queen and a daughter of a King—also bowed with years, who had waited half her life for the fulfilment of a promise.

God would see to it that the promise was kept. Why waste resentment on him who seemed a breaker of promises; God would resent for her. She was brought to the verge of death, she had long been the house-mate of poverty; her faith was proof against all. When I saw her last she sat among the squirrels on a dung-smeared veranda in a courtyard, where cows and buffaloes were stalled. The squirrels played about her; she had been herself a squirrel, she told me, in her last generation, wherefore they loved her; and she sat