"No. Mother India called me when I was a boy. I used to hunt with my father." That was true; for some reason he detested lying to her.
"Is it true," she queried, "that there are mystics who walk in the jungles with animals--who belong to a sort of brotherhood of the wild and understand tiger and python and cobra?"
"The jungle has her own secrets," was his reply; "things that white men will never know."
"I heard a man," she resumed, "a converted Brahmin priest, lecture in New Orleans. He told of his boyhood; of the magic lore of the 'Mahabarata' and the 'Ramayana'; and of a time when an old priest--he called him a _Saddhu_--took him into the jungle at night, and he heard the many animal-sounds--the voices of the jungle. He said that once green eyes peered at them, so close that he could hear the quick breathing of the beast, and the old priest only looked into the eyes--oh, he described that look as so potent and unafraid!--and soon the eyes disappeared. I've always remembered that. Since then I've wanted to _feel_ the jungle--and the power of will that can soothe a great animal. Yet I suppose Mother India, as you call her, is suspicious of us foreigners who try to pry into her secrets. And yet"--the brown eyes were filled with reflections--"perhaps she has a right to be resentful, for men have maligned and misrepresented her so, credited her with false mysticism, with _Mahatmas_ and cults of which she isn't guilty." Then she laughed--a little ripple that broke the smooth spell. "I--an outsider--talk as if I were intimate with India! Although sometimes I do feel that I must have known India before; a haunting familiarity. That's why I came--to see if my visions were aright." Again the rippling laugh. "But I'm sure you'll think me an Annie Besant, incognito, if I talk on like this!"
"But you should tell me of India; for you've hunted in her forests and wild places. Oh, it must be wonderful to know the world!"
"Well, I'd scarcely say I know the world," he corrected; "only a few Indian and Persian cities--and some of the more southern watering-places of Asia. I was stationed for a while at Singapore."
"Stationed? You mean in the interest of your firm--or were you in the Army then, like your brother?"