Read "Awakening" by Maud Diver online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Drive nature out with a fork; -- she comes running back. " HORACE.
Lilamani stood alone upon her balcony -- her "House of Gods," she had named it -- feeling a little lost without her private shrine dear to Hindu womanhood. And here was a shrine indeed: roofed with turquoise of heaven, paved with sapphire of the sea. The trees set about its portals were rough-cut emerald and jade; and the grey-white rocks that broke up the sapphire into foam of diamonds -- what were they? Here she was at a loss. The rocks, it seemed, stoutly refused to be anything but rocks; and it pleased her whimsical fancy to set this down to the natural obstinacy of their hearts. Surely no Hindu woman -- not even the queens of immemorial times when _purdah_ was not -- could have possessed a House of Gods so richly jewelled; so vast, yet so intimate in its appeal alike to sense and spirit.