Page:The Downfall of the Gods (1911).pdf/37

Fate had decreed that his days should be spent among the casteless folk, who were as driven cattle before their Brahman lords; but from that day, long ago, when the water had whispered its secret to his childish ears, he had hugged to his heart a dear, inspiring conviction. In that hour he had been aware of something that stirred within him and matched that which the reflection of his features had revealed—the soul of the Dominant Race moving, like a babe in the womb, in the heart and brain of this its unacknowledged son. An excitement of pride and of delight, a sudden, new, strange sense of power—of latent force, of potential greatness—had shaken the boy with long-drawn passionate throbs; and thereafter the knowledge that he was not as other toilers in the dust had sustained and uplifted him. To his fellows life was bereft of hope. It stretched away before them, an endless vista of monotony and labour, till it lost itself at last in the smoke of the burning-ghats. But to Chun it was full of promise. The days through which he was living were merely a period of trial, of probation. Fortified by the conviction, which he cherished with so triumphant a certainty, and hid from his fellows with so jealous a care, he could make terms with the unendurable. The pains and troubles of the moment were powerless to oppress the spirit of one who lived, not for the present, but for the future. When the appointed hour should strike, he would slough his pretended inferiority,