That afternoon, he was going with Roy to a select drawing-room meeting.  A certain Mr Ramji Lal had been asked to read a paper on the revival of Indian arts and crafts.  Dyan had been looking forward to it keenly; but now, sore and miserable as he was—­all sense of purpose and direction gone—­he felt out of tune with the whole thing.

He would have been thankful to cry off.  Roy, however, must not suspect the truth—­Roy, who himself might be the stumbling-block.  The suspicion stung like a scorpion; though it soothed a little his hurt pride of race.

Embittered and antagonistic, he listened only with half his mind to his own countryman’s impassioned appeal for renewal of the true Swadeshi[1] spirit in India; renewal of her own innate artistic culture, her faith in the creative power of thought and ideas.  That spirit—­said the speaker—­has no war-cries, no shoutings in the market-place.  It is a way of looking at life.  Its true genesis and inspiration is in the home.  Like flame, newly-lit, it needs cherishing.  Instead, it is in danger of being stamped out by false Swadeshi—­an imitation product of the West; noisy and political, crying out for more factories, more councils; caring nothing for true Indian traditions of art and life.  It will not buy goods from Birmingham and Manchester; but it will create Birmingham and Manchester in India.  In effect, it is the age-old argument whether the greatness of a nation comes from the dominion of men or machinery....

For all this, Dyan had cared intensely twenty-four hours ago.  Now it seemed little better than a rhapsody of fine phrases—­’sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.’

Could the mere word of a woman so swiftly and violently transform the mind of a man?  His innate masculinity resented the idea.  It succumbed, nevertheless.  He was too deeply hurt in his pride and his passionate heart to think or feel sanely while the wound was still so fresh.  He was scarcely stirred even by the allusion to Rajputana in Mr Ramji Lal’s peroration.

“I ask you to consider, in conclusion—­my dear and honoured English friends—­the words of a veteran lover of India, who is also a son of England.  It was his conviction—­it is also mine—­that ’the still living art of India, the still living chivalry of Rajputana, the still living religion of the Hindus, are the only three points on which there is any possibility of regenerating the national life of India—­the India of the Hindus....’”

Very fine; doubtless very true; but what use—­after all—­their eternal talk?  By blowing volumes of air from their lungs, did they shift the mountains of difficulty one single inch?

More talk followed; tea and attentions that would have flattered him yesterday.  To-day it all passed clean over his head.  They were ready enough to pamper him, like a lap-dog, these good ladies; forgetting he was a man, with a man’s heart and brain, making demand for something more than carefully chosen sugar-plums.