e apparently decided not to annihilate me.

"It was hell, Hilary, old chap, to chuck the Persian proposition," said
he, his hands in his trouser pockets, looking out of the window at the
infinitely reaching landscape of the chimney pots of south London, their
grey smoke making London's unique pearly haze below the crisp blue of
the March sky. "Just hell!" he muttered in his bass whisper, and craning
round my neck I could, with the tail of my eye, catch his gaze, which
was very wistful and seemed directed not at the opalescent mystery of
the London air, but at the clear vividness of the Persian desert. Away
and away, beyond the shimmering sand, gleamed the frosted town with
white walls, white domes, white minarets against the horizon band of
topaz and amethystine vapours. And in his nostrils was the immemorable
smell of the East, and in his ears the startling jingle of the harness
and the pad of the camels, and the guttural cries of the drivers, and in
his heart the certainty of plucking out the secret from the soul of this
strange land. . . .

At last he swung round and throwing himself into the armchair enquired
politely after the health of Barbara and Susan. As far as the Persian
journey was concerned the palaver was ended. He did not intend to give
me his reasons for staying in England and I could not demand them more
insistently. At any rate I had discovered the cause of his grumpiness.
What creature of Jaffery's temperament could be contented with a soft
bed in the centre of civilisation, when he had the chance of sleeping in
verminous caravanserais with a saddle for pillow? In spite of his
amazing predilections, Jaffery was very human. He would make a great
sacrifice without hesitation; but the consequences of the sacrifice
would cause him to go about like a bear with a sore head.

And the cause of the sacrifice? Obviously Doria. Once having been
admitted to her bedside, he went there every day. Flowers and fruit he
had sent from the very beginning in absurd profusion; a grape for Doria
failed in adequacy unless it was the size of a pumpkin. Now he brought
the offerings personally in embarrassing bulk. One offering was a
gramophone which nearly drove her mad. Even in its present stage of
development it offends the sensitive ear; but in its early days it was
an instrument of torturing cacophony. And Jaffery, thinking the brazen
strains music of the spheres, would turn on the hideous engine, when he
came to see he