frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by
means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia--a mild elder
Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest
they annoy him and he put a final veto on them. Being well versed in
their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their strange illogical
way of believing. The Christianity of Christ she could accept. It was a
faith of the heart and the life. But its crystallised forms and dogmas
proved a stumbling-block to this embarrassing slip of a Hindu girl, who
calmly reminded the Reverend Jeffrey Sale that the creed of his Church
had not really been inspired by Christ, but dictated by Constantine and
the Council of Nicea; who wanted to know why, in so great a religion,
was there no true worship of woman--no recognising, in the creative
principle, the Divine Motherhood of God? Finally, she had scandalised
them both by quarrelling with their exclusive belief in one single
instance, through endless ages, of the All-embracing, and All-creating
revealed in terms of human life. Was not that same idea a part of her
own religion--a world-wide doctrine of Indo-Aryan origin? Was every
other revealing false, except that one made to an unbelieving race only
two thousand years ago? To her--unregenerate but not unbelieving--the
message of Krishna seemed to strike a deeper note of promise. "Wherever
irreligion prevails and true religion declines, there I manifest myself
in a human form to establish righteousness and to destroy evil."

So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply
with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital
element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final
confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the
field. And Lilámani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private