Teaching, reading, discussion everything had now lost its interest for Margaret. The Swamiji's voice was always ringing in her ears. It seemed to her that India was calling her, unceasingly, insistently. She felt that it was darkness all around and only in the east there was a streak of light. And that streak of light seemed to be reaching out to her and beckoning her. "Your place is there in India," the Swamiji had said, "but that can be only when you are ready."

But was it so easy to make herself ready? The Swamiji himself had graphically spoken of India to her. He had made her see India in all her squalor. Poverty, ignorance, jealousy, filth - these had free play everywhere in that country. The British would look down upon her. The Indians would treat her with suspicion and dislike; they were people who treated their own fellow countrymen as untouchables. It was to serve the women and educate the girls of such a country that Margaret was being called. And they were women, so conservative, so narrow-minded, that they would not let her even cross their orthodox thresholds. As for education, would they ever allow their precious daughters to be taught by a woman of an alien faith?

It was at such a moment of doubt that she received from the Master this heartening message: "It is not a man we need but a woman; a real lioness, to work for the Indians, women specially….

"India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination, and above all, the Celtic blood, make you just the woman India needs.