easy with Lady Meryon."

"Oh, she is kind enough in an indifferent sort of way. I am not the
persecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all. But that is all on the
surface and does not matter. It is India I care for-the people, the sun,
the infinite beauty. It was coming home. You would laugh if I told you
I knew Peshawar long before I came here. Knew it--walked here, lived.
Before there were English in India at all." She broke off. "You won't
understand."

"Oh, I have had that feeling, too," I said patronizingly. "If one has
read very much about a place-"

"That was not quite what I meant. Never mind. The people, the
place--that is the real thing to me. All this is the dream." The sweep
of her hand took in not only Winifred and myself, but the general's
stately residence, which to blaspheme in Peshawar is rank infidelity.

"By George, I would give thousands to feel that! I can't get out of
Europe here. I want to write, Miss Loring," I found myself saying. "I'd
done a bit, and then the war came and blew my life to pieces. Now I want
to get inside the skin of the East, and I can't do it. I see it from
outside, with a pane of glass between. No life in it. If you feel as you
say, for God's sake be my interpreter!"

I really meant what I said. I knew she was a harp that any breeze would
sweep into music. I divined that temperament in her and proposed to use
it for my own ends. She had and I had not, the power to be a part of all
she saw, to feel kindred blood running in her own veins. To the average
European the native life of India is scarcely interesting, so far is it
removed from all comprehension. To me it was interesting, but I could
not tell why. I stood outside and had not the fairy gold to pay for my
entrance. Here at all events she could buy her way where I could not.
Without cruelty, which honestly was not my besetting sin--especially
where women were concerned, the egoist in me felt I would use her, would
extract the last drop of the enchantment of her knowledge before I went
on my way. What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman should
minister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretend
to be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness--that
fastidiousness which is the only austerity in men not otherwise austere.

"Interpret?" she said, looking at me with clear hazel eyes; "how could
I? You were in the native city yesterday. What did you miss?"

"Everything! I saw masses