he word. "I'll give
you one month--no: you're such a good, thorough little chap, it will
take longer--two months, to change your mind. Only"--he looked down at
Rudolph with a comic, elderly air--"let me observe, our yellow people
have that rather neat proverb. A hen's head, dear chap,--not with a
battle-axe! No. Hot weather's coming, too. No sorrows of Werther, now,
over such"--He laughed again. "Don't scowl, I'll be good. I won't say
it. You'll supply the word, in two months!"

He let the pony have his way, and was off in a clatter. Lonely, fuming
with resentment, Rudolph stared after him. What could he know, this
airy, unfeeling meddler, so free with his advice and innuendo? Let him
go, then, let him canter away. He had seen quickly, guessed with a
diabolic shrewdness, yet would remain on the surface, always, of a
mystery so violent and so profound. The young man stalked into his
vacant nunnery in a rage, a dismal pomp of emotion: reason telling him
that a friend had spoken sense, imagination clothing him in the sceptred
pall of tragedy.

Yet one of these unwelcome words had stuck: he was Werther, it was
true--a man who came too late. Another word was soon fulfilled; for the
hot weather came, sudden, tropical, ferocious. Without gradation, the
vernal days and languid noons were gone in a twinkling. The change came
like another act of a play. One morning--though the dawn stirred cool
and fragrant as all dawns before--the "boy" laid out Rudolph's white
tunic, slipped in the shining buttons, smeared pipe-clay on his heaviest
helmet; and Rudolph, looking from his window, saw that on the river, by
the same instinct, boatmen were stretching up their bamboo awnings.
Breakfast was hardly ended, before river, and convex field, and huddling
red tiles of the town, lay under a blurred, quivering distortion. The
day flamed. At night, against a glow of fiery umber, the western hills
broke sharp and thin as sheet-iron, while below them rose in flooding
mirage a bright strip of magical water.

Thus, in these days, he rode for his exercise while the sun still lay
behind the ocean; and thus her lively, pointed face and wide blue eyes,
wondering or downcast or merry, were mingled in his thoughts with the
first rousing of the world, the beat of hoofs in cool silences, the wide
lights of creation over an aged, weary, alien empire. Their ponies
whinnying like old friends, they met, by chance or appointment, before
the power of sleep had