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 merely to smear fresh plaster over the floor. True, the Englishman of the factory, together with the rest of its abominations, are all swept away into oblivion like a handful of dust,—but my Damini!’

Many will not agree with me, I know. Shankaracharya’s philosophy spares no one. All the world is maya, a trembling dewdrop on the lotus leaf. But Shankaracharya was a sannyasin. ‘Who is your wife, who your son?’ were questions he asked, without understanding their meaning, Nor being a sannyasin myself, I know full well that Damini is not a vanishing dewdrop on the lotus leaf.

But, I am told, there are householders also, who say the same thing. That may be. They are mere householders, who have lost only the mistress of their house. Their home is doubtless maya, and so likewise is its mistress. These are their own handiwork, and when done with any broom is good. enough for sweeping their fragments clean away.

I did not keep house long enough to settle down as a householder, nor is mine the temperament of a sannyasin,—that saved me. So the Damini whom I gained became neither housewife