I had not the power to utter a word. You cannot take shelter
behind the walls of decorum when in a moment the fire leaps up
and, with the flash of its sword and the roar of its laughter,
destroys all the miser's stores. I was in terror lest he should
forget himself and take me by the hand. For he shook like a
quivering tongue of fire; his eyes showered scorching sparks on
me.

"Are you for ever determined," he cried after a pause, "to make
gods of your petty household duties--you who have it in you to
send us to life or to death? Is this power of yours to be kept
veiled in a zenana? Cast away all false shame, I pray you; snap
your fingers at the whispering around. Take your plunge today
into the freedom of the outer world."

When, in Sandip's appeals, his worship of the country gets to be
subtly interwoven with his worship of me, then does my blood
dance, indeed, and the barriers of my hesitation totter. His
talks about Art and Sex, his distinctions between Real and
Unreal, had but clogged my attempts at response with some
revolting nastiness. This, however, now burst again into a glow
before which my repugnance faded away. I felt that my
resplendent womanhood made me indeed a goddess. Why should not
its glory flash from my forehead with visible brilliance? Why
does not my voice find a word, some audible cry, which would be
like a sacred spell to my country for its fire initiation?

All of a sudden my maid Khema rushed into the room, dishevelled.
"Give me my wages and let me go," she screamed. "Never in all my
life have I been so ..." The rest of her speech was drowned in