It was late, and he met no one.
There had come upon him during the last hours a great yearning for his own country.

He ran over in his mind, with a sense of anger against himself, the miserable wasted weeks in Calcutta--the nights in the glaring bars and halls, the friends he had made, the depths in which he had wallowed.

He came to the Maidan, and, standing upon that empty plain, gazed round on the great silent city.

He hated it, with its statues of Viceroys and soldiers, its houses of rich merchants, its insolence.

He would lead his own people against all that it symbolised.