Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/210

190 still, so still. There is a great basin of black marble, and in the middle of it the impress of a great foot. … A priest sits on his heels beside the basin, anointing the foot with sandal-wood oil, washing it, offering it flowers and incense.

Another Priest walks round and round the basin crooning mantras. The real worshipper is a poor woman in an advanced stage of leprosy, the flickering light from the little shells of cocoanut falls upon the masses of white and yellow flowers, upon the fruits and incense, upon the costly offerings, upon the poor mis-shapen face. It is still, so still, so full of mystery, her face, the flowers, the Priest, leaping into life like a pulse-beat, with the flare of the cotton wick. … Shiva’s great white bull sits watching his master’s symbol in the Temple beside us: other worshippers there are none, and the pandas have wandered to the bathing ghat, to encompass the unwary. … Sudden my soul hears through the stillness the message of a child in the strains of that beautiful anthem of Stainer’s. His voice rises clear and exultant so that I can hear it across the seas from the Cathedral of old gray