comfort seemed to ... any number of such reflections come back
to me today, but let them be.

When, however, Sandip Babu began to speak that afternoon, and the
hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though
they would break all bounds, I saw him wonderfully transformed.
Especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of
light from the slowly setting sun, as it sunk below the roof-line
of the pavilion, he seemed to me to be marked out by the gods as
their messenger to mortal men and women.

From beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances
was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of
his assurance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had
impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed
my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any
heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in
fateful Orion, flashed full on my face.

I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of
the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's
womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had
shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a
woman's benediction ...

It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the
fire in his words had flamed up more fiercely. Indra's [11]
steed refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder
and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his
language had caught fire from my eyes; for we women are not only