If there was something troubling him, Ruttie would have no way of divining it, so impenetrable was his silence when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. She was clueless even about the undercurrents between him and Gandhi. She was not the sort to seek her husband’s permission for her friendships, and it had not occurred to her to take his prior permission before corresponding with Gandhi. Nor did she tell him of the cheque she had sent to Gandhi sometime before they left for their holiday. It was a generous impulse on her part, wanting to contribute to the fund that Gandhi had started for a memorial at Jallianwala Bagh to commemorate the killings. ‘The memorial would at least give us an excuse for living,’ as she must have said in her accompanying note, for Gandhi quoted her in his next newspaper column, taking care to mention how ‘Mrs Jinnah truly remarked when she gave her mite to the fund, the memorial would at least give us an excuse for living.’ The article, ‘Neither a Saint Nor a Politician’, which appeared in Gandhi’s weekly newspaper, Young India, on May. 12, 1920, would have probably escaped Jinnah’s notice—at least till he got home from his holiday in Ooty—but even had he read it, it was not in his nature to raise the subject with Ruttie, considering it strictly her business whom she chose to write to or send money to.