had dared to accept all risks and follow the promptings of his heart.
One of these days there would dawn on Roy the knowledge that he was the
child of a unique romance, of a mutual love and courage that had run the
gauntlet of prejudices and antagonisms, of fightings without and fears
within; yet, in the end, had triumphed as they triumph who will not
admit defeat. All this initial blending of ecstasy and pain, of
spiritual striving and mastery, had gone to the making of Roy, who in
the fulness of time would realise--perhaps with pride, perhaps with
secret trouble and misgiving--the high and complex heritage that was
his.

* * * * *

Meanwhile he only knew that he was fearfully happy, especially in summer
time; that his father--who had smiling eyes and loved messing with
paints like a boy--was kinder than anyone else's, so long as you didn't
tell bad fibs or meddle with his brushes; that his idolised mother, in
her soft coloured silks and saris, her bangles and silver shoes, was the
"very most beautiful" being in the whole world. And Roy's response to
the appeal of beauty was abnormally quick and keen. It could hardly be
otherwise with the son of these two. He loved, with a fervour beyond his
years, the clear pale oval of his mother's face; the coils of her dark
hair, seen always through a film of softest muslin--moon-yellow or
apple-blossom pink, or deep dark blue like the sky out of his window at
night spangled with stars. He loved the glimmer of her jewels, the sheen
and feel of her wonderful Indian silks, that seemed to smell like the
big sandalwood box in the drawing-room. And beyond everything he loved
her smile and the touch of her hand, and her voice that could charm away
all nightmare terrors, all questionings and rebellions, of his excitable
brain.