ace that still appears very much as it has always been.

Roy--observant and interested as usual--saw, in the brilliant gathering,
all the outward and visible signs of security, stability, power. Let
those signs be shaken never so little, thought he--and the heavens would
fall. But, in spite of grave news from Delhi--that might prove a prelude
to eruption--not a ripple stirred on the face of the waters. The grand
_shamianah_ was thronged with lively groups of women and men in the
lightest of light attire. A British band was enlivening the interlude
with musical comedy airs. Stewards were striding about looking
important, issuing orders for the next event. And around them all--as
close as boundary flags and police would allow--thronged the solid mass
of onlookers: soldiers, sepoys, and sowars from every regiment in
cantonments; minor officials with their families; ponies and _saises_
and dogs without number; all wedged in by a sea of brown faces and
bobbing turbans, thousands of them twenty or thirty deep.

Roy's eyes, travelling from that vast outer ring to the crowded tent,
suddenly saw the whole scene as typical of Anglo-Indian life: the little
concentrated world of British men and women, pursuing their own ends,
magnificently unmindful of alien eyes--watching, speculating,
misunderstanding at every turn; the whole heterogeneous mass drawn and
held together by the love of hazard and sport, the spirit of competition
without strife that is the corner-stone of British character and the
British Empire.

He had just been talking to a C.I.D.[25] man, who had things to say
about subterranean rumblings that might have startled those laughing,
chaffing groups of men and women. Too vividly his imagination pictured
the scenes at Delhi, while his eyes scanned the formidable depths of
alien humanity hemming them in, outnumbering them by thousands to one.
What if all those friendly faces became suddenly hostile--if the
laughter and high-pitched talk changed to the roar of an angry crowd...?

He shook off the nightmare feeling, rating himself for a coward. Yet he
knew it was not fantastical, not even improbable; though most of the
people around him, till they saw with their own eyes, and heard with
their own ears, would not believe....

But thoughts so unsettling were out of place, in the midst of a Gymkhana
with the grand climax imminent. So--having washed the dust out of his
throat--he sauntered across to the other tent to snat