It seemed to strike, not at his life, but at the meaning, the plausibility, the saneness of life.
It took possession of his body and his soul, and forged them into something partaking of neither the physical nor the spiritual, yet at the same moment partaking of both—something that was beyond the power of analysis, of guessing, of shivering dread even.
Quite suddenly it stopped, as caught in an air-pocket, and he became conscious of the swami's pointing finger, and his low words:
"Look there, Brother Brahman!"
And, stretched on a bed of state in the far corner of the room, he saw the figure of Martab Singh, Maharaja of Oneypore, as he had seen him that first day in London, with his large, opaque eyes, the melancholy, childlike smile, the split, curled beard, the crimson caste mark.
The figure was rigid. There wasn't a breath of life. It was like a marvelously painted, lifelike statue—yet Thorneycroft knew that it was not a statue. He knew that it was the maharaja—the same maharaja whom, on the 15th of January, he had seen die in Marlborough House, whom he had seen buried in an English cemetery, with twenty files
