Nehal Singh's head was lifted in calm,
unshakable confidence. He had no need of weapons. He had seen his destiny,
and the obstacle which would be thrown in his path would, with equal
certainty, be thrown out of it. He felt himself extraordinarily strong.
His very surroundings seemed to fortify him with their splendor. Other
parts of the palace bore the grievous traces of a past devastating
race-hatred; crumbling pillars, images whose jeweled eyes had been made
dark and lifeless by robber hands; broken pavements, defaced carvings--all
these pointed to a period in human life which was gone for ever, a period
of mad fanaticism and passionate clinging to the Old in defiance of the
New. Here the New was triumphant. Hands still living had raised the mighty
golden dome; the fountain whose waters bubbled up from the Sacred Tank
within the temple was his own creation. The whole place became a sort of
outward and visible sign of the New Life, New Era, which was opening out
before him, and the old man at his side was nothing more than a relic, a
piece of clinging wreckage. Yesterday he had been a wise man whose
judgment and guidance was a thing to be considered.
But between Yesterday and Today there is occasionally a long night in
which much may happen. A life may go out, a life may come in; a devil may
become a saint, or a saint a devil; a man may swing from one pole of
opinion to another, and this last is perhaps the easiest of all.
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