p, 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
accident, and he turned back with her as a matter of course. It was a
kind of fruition of all that light and colour and passive delight that
they should meet and take a path together, he at least was aware. Hilda
asked him if he was quite all right now, and he said "Absolutely" with a
shade of emphasis. She charged him with having been a remarkable case,
and he piled up illustrations of what he felt able to do in his
convalescence. There was something in the way he insisted upon his
restoration which made her hasten to take her privilege of intimacy.

"And I hear I may congratulate you," she said. "You have got what you
wanted."

"Someone has told you," he retorted, "who is not friendly to it."

"On the contrary, someone who has given it the most cordial
support--Alicia Livingstone."

He mused upon this for an instant, as if it presented Alicia for the
first time under such an aspect.

"She has been immensely kind," he asserted, "but she wasn't at first. At
first she was hostile, like you, only that her hostility was different,
just as she is different. She had to be converted," he went on
hopefully, "but it was less difficult than I imagined. I think she takes
a kind of pride in conquering her prejudices, and being true to the real
breadth of her nature."

"I am sure she would like her nature to be broad. She might very well be
content that it is charming. And what is the difference between her
hostility and mine?"