and privately at the remembrance, and what a difference
there was. I had resented Dufferin's slap.

We had spiced hump and jungle-fowl and a Normandy cheese, everybody will
understand that; but how shall I make plain with what exultation and
simplicity we ate and drank, how the four candid selves of us sat around
the table in a cloud of tobacco and cheered each other on, Armour always
far in front turning handsprings as he went. Scraps come back to me, but
the whole queer night has receded and taken its place among those dreams
that insist at times upon having been realities. Rosario told us stories
Kipling might have coveted of the under life of Port Said. Strobo talked
with glorious gusto of his uncle the brigand. They were liberated men;
we were all liberated men. 'Let the direction go,' cried Armour, 'and
give the senses flight, taking the image as it comes, beating the air
with happy pinions.' He must have been talking of his work, but I can
not now remember. And what made Strobo say, of life and art, 'I have
waited for ten years and five thousand pounds--now my old violin says,
"Go, handle the ladle! Go, add up the account!"' And did we really
discuss the chances of ultimate salvation for souls in the Secretariat?
I know I lifted my glass once and cried, 'I, a slave, drink to freedom!'
and Rosario clinked with me. And Strobo played wailing Hungarian airs
with sudden little shakes of hopeless laughter in them. I can not
even now hear Naches without being filled with the recollection of how
certain bare branches in me that night blossomed.

I walked alone down the hill and along the three miles to the Club, and
at every step the tide sank in me till it cast me on my threshold at
three in the morning, just the middle-aged shell of a Secretary to the
Government of India that I was when I set forth. Next day when my head
clerk brought me the files we avoided one another's glances; and it was
quite three weeks before I could bring myself to address him with the
dignity and distance prescribed for his station as 'Mr.' Rosario.

Chapter 2.IX.

I went of course to Calcutta for the four winter months. Harris and I
were together at the Club. It was the year, I remember, of the great
shindy as to whether foreign consuls should continue to be made
honourary members, in view of the sentiments some of them were freely
reflecting from Europe upon the subject of a war in South Africa which
was none of theirs. Certainly, fee