e soft brown tendrils of hair on her temples, and fluttered
her pink cotton gown a little. She stood very still, with her arms
hanging and her hands clasped loosely in front of her. There was about
her whole attitude an air of studied quiet which in some vague fashion
the slight clasp of her hands accentuated. Her face, with its tightly,
almost rigidly closed lips, would have been quite in keeping with the
impression of conscious calm which her entire presence suggested, had it
not been that when she raised her eyes a strange contradiction to this
idea was afforded. They were large gray eyes, unusually bright and
rather startling in effect, for they seemed the only live thing about
her. Gleaming from her still, set face, there was something almost
alarming in their brilliancy. They softened with a sudden glow of
pleasure as they rested on the translucent green of the wheat-fields
under the broad generous sunlight, and then wandered to where the pure
vivid yellow of the mustard-flower spread in waves to the base of the
hills, now mystically veiled in radiance. She stood motionless, watching
their melting, elusive changes from palpitating rose to the transparent
purple of amethyst. The stillness of evening was broken by the
monotonous, not unmusical creaking of a Persian wheel at some little
distance to the left of the tent. The well stood in a little grove of
trees; between their branches she could see, when she turned her head,
the coloured saris of the village women, where they stood in groups
chattering as they drew the water, and the little naked brown babies
that toddled beside them or sprawled on the hard ground beneath the
trees. From the village of flat-roofed mud houses under the low hill at
the back of the tents, other women were crossing the plain toward the
well, their terra-cotta water-jars poised easily on their heads, casting
long shadows on the sun-baked ground as they came.

Presently, in the distance, from the direction of the sunlit
hills opposite a little group of men came into sight. Far off, the
mustard-coloured jackets and the red turbans of the orderlies made vivid
splashes of colour on the dull plain. As they came nearer, the guns
slung across their shoulders, the cases of mathematical instruments,
the hammers, and other heavy baggage they carried for the sahib, became
visible. A little in front, at walking pace rode the sahib himself,
making notes as he came in a book he held before him. The girl