t I'm not going on--even at her Majesty's express
command!--Look here, Rose ... let be." He suddenly changed his tone. "I
can feel how it bothers you. So--why pretend...?"

She looked down; twisting her opal ring, making the delicate colours
flash and change.

"It's a pity--isn't it?"--she seemed to muse aloud--"that more than half
of life is made up of pretending. It becomes rather a delicate
problem--fixing boundary lines. I _do_ admire your gift, Roy. And you're
so intensely human. But I confess, I--I _am_ jerked by parts of your
theme. Doesn't all this animosity and open vilification affect your own
feeling about--things, the least bit?"

"Yes. It does. Only--not in your way. It makes me unhappy, because the
real India--snowed under with specious talk and bitter invective--has
less chance now than ever of being understood by those who can't see
below the surface."

"Me--for instance?"

He sighed. "Oh, scores and scores of you, here and at Home. And scores
of others, who have far less excuse. That's why one feels bound to do
what one can...."

His thoughts on that score went too deep for utterance.

But Rose was engaged in her own purely personal deliberations.

"You might want to come out again ... afterwards?"

"Yes--I should hope to. Besides ... there are my cousins...."

"Indian ones----?"

"Yes. Very clever. Very charming. Rose ... you've been six years in
India. Have you ever met, in a friendly way, a cultivated, well-born
Indian--man or woman?"

"N-no. Not worth mentioning."

"And ... you haven't wanted to?"

He felt her shrink from the direct question.

"Why press the point, Roy? It needn't make any real difference--need
it--between you and me?"

Her counter-question was still more direct, more searching.

"Perhaps not--now," he said. "It might ... make a lot ...
afterwards----"

At that critical juncture their talk was interrupted by a peon with a
note that required immediate attention: and Roy, left alone, felt
increasingly disillusioned and dismayed.

Later on, to his relief, Rose suggested a ride. She seemed suddenly in a
more elusive mood than he had experienced since their engagement. She
did not refer again to his novel, or to the thorny topic of India; and
their parting embrace was chilled by a shadow of constraint.

"_How_ would it be--afterwards?" he wondered, riding back to the Club,
at a foot's pace, feeling tired and feverish and gravely puzzled as to
whether it might n