as a snake sheds its worn-out skin, and would suddenly blaze forth, before the eyes of those who had known him for one casteless like themselves, a demigod confessed.
In anticipation of that hour he prepared himself with a diligence and resolution that never slackened. With the aid of old Slat, the wise man, he acquired a knowledge of the sacred script, such as was rarely possessed by men of his supposed estate; and he had even made a little acquaintance with the holy, forbidden books. And the ease wherewith he had gotten this lore had itself been full of wonderful surprises. It had been as though he remembered, rather than learned—remembered things half forgotten and now recalled to memory. Once more it was the Brahman blood astir in his brain, bringing with it that pulsing sense of power.
Secretly, too, he had performed a thousand acts of purification, the better to fit himself for the moment, when, as he surely believed, he should be received back into caste by the demigods, his brethren. While he awaited the dawning of that day, he herded with the dull masses of his fellows, and with them prostrated himself before the priest-princes, the offspring of those who, in the beginning, sprang from the mouth of Purusha, the Fount of the Universe, the eternal Soul of Things. But always he felt that he, in truth, belonged to the number of the adored, not to the adorers; and already, almost unconsciously, he lorded it over the latter, less by virtue of his
