de reluctantly that it
would not. Reluctantly because such imperviousness argues a lack of
perception, of _flair_, in directions which any continental centre would
recognise as vastly tickling, regrettable in a capital of such vaunted
sophistication as that which sits beside the Hooghly. It may as well be
shortly admitted, however, that to stir Calcutta's sense of comedy you
must, for example, attempt to corner, by shortsightedness or faulty
technical equipment, a civet cat in a jackal hunt, or, coming out from
England to assume official duties, you must take a larger view of your
dignities than the clubs are accustomed to admit. For the sex that does
not hunt jackals it is easier--you have only to be a little frivolous
and Calcutta will invent for you the most side-shaking nickname, as in
the case of three ladies known in a viceroyalty of happy legend as the
World, the Flesh and the Devil. I should be sorry to give the impression
that Calcutta is therefore a place of gloom. The source of these things
is perennial, and the noise of laughter is ever in the air of the Indian
capital. Between the explosions, however, it is natural enough that the
affairs of a priest of College street and an actress of no address at
all should slip unnoticed, especially as they did not advertise it.
Stephen mostly came, on afternoons when there was no rehearsal, to tea.
He, Stephen, had a perception of contrasts which answered fairly well
the purposes of a sense of humour, and nobody could question hers; it
operated obscurely to keep them in the house.

She told him buoyantly once or twice that he had been sent to her to
take the place of Duff Lindsay, who had fallen to the snare of beauty,
although she mentioned herself that he took it with a difference, a vast
temperamental difference which she was aware of not having yet quite
sounded. The depths of his faith, of course--there she could only scan
and hesitate, but this was a brink upon which she did not often find
herself, away from which, indeed, he sometimes gently guided her. The
atmospheres of their talk were the more bracing ones of this world, and
it was here that Hilda looked when she would make him a parallel for
Lindsay, and here that she found her measure of disappointment. He
warmed himself and dried his wings in the opulence of her spirit, and
she was not, on the whole, the poorer by any exchange they made, but she
was sometimes pricked to the reflection that the freemasonry b