could disturb that fixed contemplation, as of Buddha on his
lotus-throne.

And along with this wisdom, as of age or of the age of a race, there was
what I can hardly call less than an agony of sensation. Pain or pleasure
transported her, and the whole of pain or pleasure might be held in a
flower's cup or the imagined frown of a friend. It was never found in
those things which to others seemed things of importance. At the age of
twelve she passed the Matriculation of the Madras University, and awoke
to find herself famous throughout India. 'Honestly,' she said to me, 'I
was not pleased; such things did not appeal to me.' But here, in a
letter from Hyderabad, bidding one 'share a March morning' with her,
there is, at the mere contact of the sun, this outburst: 'Come and share
my exquisite March morning with me: this sumptuous blaze of gold and
sapphire sky; these scarlet lilies that adorn the sunshine; the
voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha that beat upon the
languid air with their implacable sweetness; the thousand little gold
and blue and silver breasted birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of
life in nesting time. All is hot and fierce and passionate, ardent and
unashamed in its exulting and importunate desire for life and love. And,
do you know that the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from my
heart's blood, these little quivering birds are my soul made incarnate
music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions dissolved into aerial
essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is the "very me," that part of
me that incessantly and insolently, yes, and a little deliberately,
triumphs over that other part--a thing of nerves and tissues that
suffers and cries out, and that must die to-morrow perhaps, or twenty
years hence.'

Then there was her humour, which was part of her strange wisdom, and was
always awake and on the watch. In all her letters, written in exquisite
English prose, but with an ardent imagery and a vehement sincerity of
emotion which make them, like the poems, indeed almost more directly,
un-English, Oriental, there was always this intellectual, critical sense
of humour, which could laugh at one's own enthusiasm as frankly as that
enthusiasm had been set down. And partly the humour, like the delicate
reserve of her manner, was a mask or a shelter. 'I have taught myself,'
she writes to me from India, 'to be commonplace and like everybody else
superficially. Every one thinks I am so nice and