h, to
postpone her impressions, even her emotions. In the meantime it was
something to have got it over, and she was able at a bound to talk about
the commonplaces of the roadside. In her escape from this oppression,
she too gathered a freshness, a convalescent pleasure in what they
saw; everything had in some way the likeness of the leafing teak-trees,
tender and curative. In the broad early light that lay over the tanks
there was a vague allurement, almost a presage, and the wide spaces of
the Maidan made room for hope. She asked Lindsay presently if he would
mind driving to the market; she wanted some flowers for that night. I
think she wanted some flowers for that hour. Her thought broke so easily
into the symbol of a rose.

They turned into Chowringhee, where the hibiscus bushes showed pink and
crimson over the stucco walls, and at the gates of the pillared houses
servants with brown and shining backs sat on their haunches in the
sun and were shaved. Where the street ran into shops there was still
a shuttered blankness, but here and there a doorkeeper yawned and
stretched himself before an open door, and a sweeper made a cloud of
dust beneath a commercial verandah. The first hoarding in a side street
announced the appearance of Miss Hilda Howe for one night only as Lady
Macbeth, under the kind patronage of His Excellency the Viceroy;
with Jimmy Finnigan in the close proximity of professional jealousy,
advertising five complete novelties for the same evening. It made
a cheerful note which appealed to them both; it was a pictorial
combination, Hilda and Jimmy Finnigan and the Viceroy, there was
something of gay burlesque in the metropolitan posters against the
crumbling plaster of the outer mosque wall where Mussulmans left their
shoes. Talking of Hilda they smiled; it was a way her friends had,
a testimony to the difference of her. In Alicia's smile there was a
satisfaction rather subtle and in a manner superior; she knew of things.

The life of the market, the bazar, was all awake and moving. They
rolled up through a crowd of inferior vehicles, empty for the moment and
abandoned, where the leisurely crowd with calculation under its turbans,
swayed about the market-house, and the pots of a palm-dealer ran out of
bounds and made a little grove before the stall of the man who sold pith
helmets. The warm air held the smell of all sorts of commodities; there
was a great hum of small transactions, clink of small profits