Music and song and dance became laughter.

Doubt vanished, for there seemed nothing left to doubt, as she began to sing of India rising at last, again triumphant over darkness, mother of the world and of all the nations of the world, awake, unconquerable.
Never was another song like that one! Nor was there ever such a climax.
As she finished on a chord of triumph that seemed like a new spirit bursting the bonds of ancient mystery and sank to the floor among her women, there stood the Gray Mahatma in their midst, not naked any longer, but clothed from head to heel in a saffron-colored robe, and without his paste of ashes.
He stood like a statue with folded arms, his yellow eyes blazing and his look like a lion's; and how he had entered the room I confess I don't know to this hour, nor does Athelstan King, who is a trained observer of unusual happenings.

Both doors were closed, and I will take oath that neither had been opened since the women entered.
"Peace!" was his first word, spoken like one in authority, who ordered peace and dared to do it.
He stood looking for more than a minute at King and me with, I think, just a flicker of scorn on his thin lips, as if he were wondering whether we were men enough to face the ordeal before us.

Then indefinably, yet quite perceptibly his mood changed and his appearance with it.

He held his right hand out.
"Will you not shake hands with me ?" he asked smiling.
Now that was a thing that no sanctimonious Brahman would have dreamed of doing, for fear of being defiled by the touch of a casteless foreigner; so he was either above or below the caste laws, and it is common knowledge how those who are below caste cringe and toady.