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 the reverential restraint which the Master’s presence demanded. W‘hat a shame,’ exclaimed they. ‘We have seen many awful women, but not one so outrageous.’

The Swami used to smile. ‘The Lord,’ said he, ‘takes a special delight in wrestling with a valiant opponent. When Damini has to own defeat, her surrender will be absolute.’

He began to display an exaggerated tolerance for her contumacy. That vexed Damini still more, for she looked on it as a more cunning form of punishment. And one day the Master caught her in a fit of laughter, mimicking to one of her companions the excessive suavity of his manner towards herself. Still he had not a word of rebuke, and repeated simply that the final dénouement would be all the more extraordinary, to which end the poor thing was but the instrument of Providence, and so herself not to blame.

This was how we found her when we first came. The dénouement was indeed extraordinary. I can hardly bring myself to write on further. Moreover, what happened is so difficult to tell. The network of suffering, which is woven behind the scenes, is not of any pattern set by the Scriptures, nor of our own devising. Hence the frequent