Page:The Home and the World.djvu/41

40 Sandip Babu leapt to his feet with uplifted arms and shouted 'Hurrah!'—The next moment he corrected himself and cried: 'Bande Mataram.'

A shadow of pain passed over the face of my husband. He said to me in a very gentle voice: "Neither am I divine: I am human. And therefore I dare not permit the evil which is in me to be exaggerated into an image of my country,—never, never!'

Sandip Babu cried out: 'See, Nikhil, how in the heart of a woman Truth takes flesh and blood. Woman knows how to be cruel: her virulence is like a blind storm. It is beautifully fearful. In man it is ugly, because it harbours in its centre the gnawing worms of reason and thought. I tell you, Nikhil, it is our women who will save the country. This is not the time for nice scruples. We must be unswervingly, unreasoningly brutal. We must sin. We must give our women red sandal paste with which to anoint and enthrone our sin. Don't you remember what the poet says:

Down with that righteousness, which cannot smilingly bring rack and ruin.'

When Sandip Babu, standing with his head high, insulted at a moment's impulse all that men have