fulness of life; the south wind brought her profound sweet
presciences. A coolie-woman, carrying a basket on her head, stopped and
looked at her with full glistening eyes; they smiled at each other, and
passed on. She found herself upon a narrow path, worn smooth by other
barefooted coolie-folk; it made in its devious way toward the rich mists
where the sun had gone down; and Hilda followed, breasting the glow and
the colour and the wide, flat expanse, as if in the India of it there
breathed something exquisitely sensuous and satisfying. It struck
sharp on her senses; she almost consciously thanked Heaven for such
a responsive set of nerves. Always and everywhere she was intensely
conscious of what she saw and of how she saw it; and it was
characteristic of her that she found in that saffron February evening,
spreading to a purple rim, with wandering points of colour in a
soldier's coat or a coachman's turban, an atmosphere and a mise en scene
for her own complication. She could take a tenderly artistic view of
that, more soothing a good deal than any result that came of examining
it in other lights. And she did, aware, with smiling eyes, of how full
of colour, how dramatic it was.

Nevertheless, she had hardly closed with it; any material outcome seemed
a great way off, pursuable by conjecture when there was time for that.
For the present, there on the Maidan with the south wind, she took it
with her head thrown up, in her glad, free fashion, as something that
came in the way of life--the delightful way of life--with which it was
absurd to quarrel because of a slight inconvenience or incongruity,
things which helped, after all, to make existence fascinating.

A marigold lay in the path, an orange-coloured scrap with a broken stem,
dropped from some coolie's necklace. Hilda picked it up, and drew in the
crude, warm pungency of its smell. She closed her eyes and drifted on
the odour, forgetting her speculations, losing her feet. All India and
all her passion was in that violent, penetrating fragrance; it brought
her, as she gave her senses up to it, a kind of dual perception of being
near the core, the throbbing centre of the world's meaning.

Her awakened glance fell upon Duff Lindsay. He hastened to meet her,
in his friendly way; and she was glad of the few yards that lay
between them and gave transit to her senses from that other plane.
They encountered each other in full recognition of the happiness of the
acciden