The Pool in the Desert

We drove together, after dinner, to the Taj. The moonlight lay in an empty splendour over the broad sandy road, with the acacias pricking up on each side of it and the gardens of the station bungalows stretching back into clusters of crisp shadows. It was an exquisite February night, very still. Nothing seemed abroad but two or three pariah dogs, upon vague and errant business, and the Executive Engineer going swiftly home from the club on his bicycle.

Even the little shops of the bazaar were dark and empty; only here and there a light showed barred behind the carved balconies of the upper rooms, and there was hardly any tom-tomming. The last long slope of the road showed us the river curving to the left, through a silent white waste that stretched indefinitely into the moonlight on one side, and was crowned by Akbar's fort on the other. His long high line of turrets and battlements still guarded a hint of their evening rose, and dim and exquisite above them hovered the three dome-bubbles of the Pearl Mosque. It was a night of perfect illusion, and the illusion was mysterious, delicate, and faint. I sat silent as we rolled along, twenty years nearer to the original joy of things when John and I drove through the same old dream.

Dacres, too, seemed preoccupied; only Cecily was, as they say, herself. Cecily was really more than herself, she exhibited an unusual flow of spirits. She talked continually, she pointed out this and that, she asked who lived here and who lived there. At regular intervals of about four minutes she demanded if it wasn't simply too lovely. She sat straight up with her vigorous profile and her smart hat; and the silhouette of her personality sharply refused to mingle with the dust of any dynasty. She was a contrast, a protest; positively she was an indignity. 'Do lean back, dear child,' I exclaimed at last. 'You interfere with the landscape.'

She leaned back, but she went on interfering with it in terms of sincerest enthusiasm.

When we stopped at the great archway of entrance I begged to be left in the carriage. What else could one do, when the golden moment had come, but sit in the carriage and measure it? They climbed the broad stone steps together and passed under the lofty gravures into the garden, and I waited. I waited and remembered. I am not, as perhaps by this time is evident, a person of overwhelming sentiment, but I think the smile upon my lips was gentle. So plainly I could see, beyond the massive archway and across a score of years, all that they saw at that moment-Arjamand's garden, and the long straight tank of marble cleaving it full of sleeping water and the shadows of the marshaling cypresses; her wide dark garden of roses and of pomegranates, and at the end the Vision, marvellous, aerial, the soul of something-is it beauty? is it sorrow?-that great white pride of love in mourning such as only here in all the round of our little world lifts itself to the stars, the unpaintable, indescribable Taj Mahal. A gentle breath stole out with a scent of jessamine and such a memory! I closed my eyes and felt the warm luxury of a tear.

Thinking of the two in the garden, my mood was very kind, very conniving. How foolish after all were my cherry-stone theories of taste and temperament before that uncalculating thing which sways a world and builds a Taj Mahal! Was it probable that Arjamand and her Emperor had loved fastidiously, and yet how they had loved! I wandered away into consideration of the blind forces which move the world, in which comely young persons like my daughter Cecily had such a place; I speculated vaguely upon the value of the subtler gifts of sympathy and insight which seemed indeed, at that enveloping moment, to be mere flowers strewn upon the tide of deeper emotions. The garden sent me a fragrance of roses; the moon sailed higher and picked out the little kiosks set along the wall. It was a charming, charming thing to wait, there at the portal of the silvered, scented garden, for an idyll to come forth.

When they reappeared, Dacres and my daughter, they came with casual steps and cheerful voices. They might have been a couple of tourists. The moonlight fell full upon them on the platform under the arch. It showed Dacres measuring with his stick the length of the Sanskrit letters which declared the stately texts, and Cecily's expression of polite, perfunctory interest. They looked up at the height above them; they looked back at the vision behind. Then they sauntered towards the carriage, he offering a formal hand to help her down the uncertain steps, she gracefully accepting it.

'You-you have not been long,' said I. 'I hope you didn't hurry on my account.'

'Miss Farnham found the marble a little cold under foot,' replied Dacres, putting Miss Farnham in.

'You see,' explained Cecily, 'I stupidly forgot to change into thicker soles. I have only my slippers. But, mamma, how lovely it is! Do let us come again in the daytime. I am dying to make a sketch of it.'

Mr. Tottenham was to leave us on the following day. In the morning, after 'little breakfast,' as we say in India, he sought me in the room I had set aside to be particularly my own.

Again I was writing to John, but this time I waited for precisely his interruption. I had got no further than 'My dearest husband,' and my pen-handle was a fringe.

'Another fine day,' I said, as if the old, old Indian joke could give him ease, poor man!

'Yes,' said he, 'we are having lovely weather.'

He had forgotten that it was a joke. Then he lapsed into silence while I renewed my attentions to my pen.

'I say,' he said at last, with so strained a look about his mouth that it was almost a contortion, 'I haven't done it, you know.'

'No,' I responded, cheerfully, 'and you're not going to. Is that it? Well!'

'Frankly-' said he.

'Dear me, yes! Anything else between you and me would be grotesque,' I interrupted, 'after all these years.'

'I don't think it would be a success,' he said, looking at me resolutely with his clear blue eyes, in which still lay, alas! the possibility of many delusions.

'No,' I said, 'I never did, you know. But the prospect had begun to impose upon me.'

'To say how right you were would seem, under the circumstances, the most hateful form of flattery.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I think I can dispense with your verbal endorsement.' I felt a little bitter. It was, of course, better that the connoisseur should have discovered the flaw before concluding the transaction; but although I had pointed it out myself I was not entirely pleased to have the article returned.

'I am infinitely ashamed that it should have taken me all these days-day after day and each contributory-to discover what you saw so easily and so completely.'

'You forget that I am her mother,' I could not resist the temptation of saying.

'Oh, for God's sake don't jeer! Please be absolutely direct, and tell me if you have reason to believe that to the extent of a thought, of a breath-to any extent at all-she cares.'

He was, I could see, very deeply moved; he had not arrived at this point without trouble and disorder not lightly to be put on or off. Yet I did not hurry to his relief, I was still possessed by a vague feeling of offense. I reflected that any mother would be, and I quite plumed myself upon my annoyance. It was so satisfactory, when one had a daughter, to know the sensations of even any mother. Nor was it soothing to remember that the young man's whole attitude towards Cecily had been based upon criticism of me, even though he sat before me whipped with his own lash. His temerity had been stupid and obstinate; I could not regret his punishment.

I kept him waiting long enough to think all this, and then I replied, 'I have not the least means of knowing.'

I can not say what he expected, but he squared his shoulders as if he had received a blow and might receive another. Then he looked at me with a flash of the old indignation. 'You are not near enough to her for that!' he exclaimed.

'I am not near enough to her for that.'

Silence fell between us. A crow perched upon an opened venetian and cawed lustily. For years afterward I never heard a crow caw without a sense of vain, distressing experiment. Dacres got up and began to walk about the room. I very soon put a stop to that. 'I can't talk to a pendulum,' I said, but I could not persuade him to sit down again.

'Candidly,' he said at length, 'do you think she would have me?'

'I regret to say that I think she would. But you would not dream of asking her.'

'Why not? She is a dear girl,' he responded inconsequently.

'You could not possibly stand it.'

Then Mr. Tottenham delivered himself of this remarkable phrase: 'I could stand it,' he said, 'as well as you can.'

There was far from being any joy in the irony with which I regarded him and under which I saw him gather up his resolution to go; nevertheless I did nothing to make it easy for him. I refrained from imparting my private conviction that Cecily would accept the first presentable substitute that appeared, although it was strong. I made no reference to my daughter's large fund of philosophy and small balance of sentiment. I did not even-though this was reprehensible-confess the test, the test of quality in these ten days with the marble archives of the Moguls, which I had almost wantonly suggested, which he had so unconsciously accepted, so disastrously applied. I gave him quite fifteen minutes of his bad quarter of an hour, and when it was over I wrote truthfully but furiously to John....

That was ten years ago. We have since attained the shades of retirement, and our daughter is still with us when she is not with Aunt Emma and Aunt Alice-grandmamma has passed away. Mr. Tottenham's dumb departure that day in February-it was the year John got his C.B.-was followed, I am thankful to say, by none of the symptoms of unrequited affection on Cecily's part. Not for ten minutes, so far as I was aware, was she the maid forlorn. I think her self-respect was of too robust a character, thanks to the Misses Farnham. Still less, of course, had she any reproaches to serve upon her mother, although for a long time I thought I detected-or was it my guilty conscience?-a spark of shrewdness in the glance she bent upon me when the talk was of Mr. Tottenham and the probabilities of his return to Agra. So well did she sustain her experience, or so little did she feel it, that I believe the impression went abroad that Dacres had been sent disconsolate away. One astonishing conversation I had with her some six months later, which turned upon the point of a particularly desirable offer. She told me something then, without any sort of embarrassment, but quite lucidly and directly, that edified me much to hear. She said that while she was quite sure that Mr. Tottenham thought of her only as a friend-she had never had the least reason for any other impression-he had done her a service for which she could not thank him enough-in showing her what a husband might be. He had given her a standard; it might be high, but it was unalterable. She didn't know whether she could describe it, but Mr. Tottenham was different from the kind of man you seemed to meet in India. He had his own ways of looking at things, and he talked so well. He had given her an ideal, and she intended to profit by it. To know that men like Mr. Tottenham existed, and to marry any other kind would be an act of folly which she did not intend to commit. No, Major the Hon. Hugh Taverel did not come near it-very far short, indeed! He had talked to her during the whole of dinner the night before about jackal-hunting with a bobbery pack-not at all an elevated mind. Yes, he might be a very good fellow, but as a companion for life she was sure he would not be at all suitable. She would wait.

And she has waited. I never thought she would, but she has. From time to time men have wished to take her from us, but the standard has been inexorable, and none of them have reached it. When Dacres married the charming American whom he caught like a butterfly upon her Eastern tour, Cecily sent them as a wedding present an alabaster model of the Taj, and I let her do it-the gift was so exquisitely appropriate. I suppose he never looks at it without being reminded that he didn't marry Miss Farnham, and I hope that he remembers that he owes it to Miss Farnham's mother. So much I think I might claim; it is really very little considering what it stands for. Cecily is permanently with us-I believe she considers herself an intimate. I am very reasonable about lending her to her aunts, but she takes no sort of advantage of my liberality; she says she knows her duty is at home. She is growing into a firm and solid English maiden lady, with a good colour and great decision of character. That she always had.

I point out to John, when she takes our crumpets away from us, that she gets it from him. I could never take away anybody's crumpets, merely because they were indigestible, least of all my own parents'. She has acquired a distinct affection for us, by some means best known to herself; but I should have no objection to that if she would not rearrange my bonnet-strings. That is a fond liberty to which I take exception; but it is one thing to take exception and another to express it.

Our daughter is with us, permanently with us. She declares that she intends to be the prop of our declining years; she makes the statement often, and always as if it were humorous. Nevertheless I sometimes notice a spirit of inquiry, a note of investigation in her encounters with the opposite sex that suggests an expectation not yet extinct that another and perhaps a more appreciative Dacres Tottenham may flash across her field of vision-alas, how improbable! Myself I can not imagine why she should wish it; I have grown in my old age into a perfect horror of cultivated young men; but if such a person should by a miracle at any time appear, I think it is extremely improbable that I will interfere on his behalf.

2. An Impossible Ideal.

To understand how we prized him, Dora Harris and I, it is necessary to know Simla. I suppose people think of that place, if they ever do think of it, as an agreeable retreat in the wilds of the Himalayas where deodars and scandals grow, and where the Viceroy if he likes may take off his decorations and go about in flannels. I know how useless it would be to try to give a more faithful impression, and I will hold back from the attempt as far as I can. Besides, my little story is itself an explanation of Simla.

Ingersoll Armour might have appeared almost anywhere else without making social history. He came and bloomed among us in the wilderness, and such and such things happened. It sounds too rude a generalization to say that Simla is a wilderness; I hasten to add that it is a waste as highly cultivated as you like, producing many things more admirable than Ingersoll Armour. Still he bloomed there conspicuously alone. Perhaps there would have been nothing to tell if we had not tried to gather him. That was wrong; Nature in Simla expects you to be content with cocked hats.

There are artists almost everywhere and people who paint even in the Himalayas, though Miss Harris and I in our superior way went yearly to the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition chiefly to amuse ourselves by scoffing. It was easy to say clever things about the poor little exhibits; and one was grateful to the show on this account, for nothing is more depressing east of Suez than the absence of provocation to say clever things. There one afternoon in May as we marched about enjoying ourselves, we came upon Ingersoll Armour, not in the flesh, but in half a dozen studies hanging in the least conspicuous corner and quite the worst light in the room.

'Eh, what?' said I, and Dora exclaimed:

'I SAY!'

'Sent out from home,' I said, ever the oracle.

'Not at all,' replied Dora. 'Look, they are Indian subjects. SIMLA subjects,' she went on, with excitement.

I turned up the catalogue. 'Ninety-seven, "Kasumti Bazaar"; ninety-eight, "Clouds on the Chor"; ninety-nine, "The House of a Friend"-Lord, what apricot blossoms! Yes, they're all Simla.'

'For goodness' sake,' said Dora, 'who painted them? You've got the catalogue!'

'"I. Armour,"' I read.

'"I. Armour,"' she repeated, and we looked at each other, saying in plain silence that to the small world of Simla I. Armour was unknown.

'Not on Government House list, I venture to believe,' said Dora. That in itself may show to what depths we sink. Yet it was a trenchant and a reasonable speculation.

'It may be a newcomer,' I suggested, but she shook her head. 'All newcomers call upon us,' she said. 'There in the middle of the Mall we escape none of them. He isn't a calling person.'

'Why do you say "he"? You are very confident with your pronouns. There's a delicacy of feeling-'

'Which exactly does not suggest a women. We are undermined by delicacy of feeling; we're not strong enough to express it with brushes. A man can make it a quality, a decorative characteristic, and so we see it. With a woman it's everything-all over the place-and of no effect. Oh, I assure you, I. Armour is a man.'

'Who shall stand against you! Let him be a man. He has taste.'

'Taste!' exclaimed Miss Harris, violently, and from the corners of her mouth I gathered that I had said one of those things which she would store up and produce to prove that I was not, for all my pretensions, a person of the truest feeling. 'He sees things.'

'There's an intensity,' I ventured.

'That's better. Yes, an intensity. A perfect passion of colour. Look at that.' She indicated a patch of hillsides perhaps six inches by four, in which the light seemed to come and go as it does in a sapphire.

We stood and gazed. It was a tremendous thing; only half a dozen studies with feeling and knowledge in them, but there in that remote fastness thrice barred against the arts a tremendous thing, a banquet for our famished eyes. What they would have said to us in London is a different matter, and how good they really were I do not find the courage to pronounce, but they had merit enough to prick our sense of beauty delightfully where we found them-oh, they were good!

'Heaven send it isn't a Tommy,' said Dora, with a falling countenance. 'There is something absolutely inaccessible about a Tommy.'

'How could it be?' I asked.

'Oh, there are some inspired ones. But it isn't-that's French technique. It's an Englishman or an American who has worked in Paris. What in the name of fortune is he doing here?'

'Oh,' I said, 'we have had them, you know. Val Prinsep came out at the time of the Prince of Wales's visit.'

'Do you remember that?'

'It's a matter of history,' I said, evasively, 'and Edwin Weeks travelled through India not so many years ago. I saw his studio in Paris afterward. Between his own canvases and Ahmedabad balconies and Delhi embroideries and Burmese Buddhas and other things he seemed to have carried off the whole place.'

'But they don't come up here ever. They come in the cold weather, and as they can get plenty of snow and ice at home, they stay down in the plains with the palm-trees.'

'Precisely; they do,' I said.

'And besides,' Dora went on, with increasing excitement, 'this isn't a master. You see, he doesn't send a single picture-only these tiny things. And there's a certain tentativeness'-Miss Harris, her parasol handle pressed against her lips, looked at me with an eagerness that was a pleasure to look at in itself.

'A certain weakness, almost a lack of confidence, in the drawing,' I said.

'What does that signify?'

'Why, immaturity, of course-not enough discipline.'

'He's a student. Not that it amounts to a defect, you know'-she was as jealous already as if she possessed the things-'only a sign to read by. I should be grateful for more signs. Why should a student come to Simla?'

'To teach, perhaps,' I suggested. Naturally one sought only among reasons of utility.

'It's the Kensington person who teaches. When they have worked in the ateliers and learned as much as this they never do. They paint fans and menu cards, and starve, but they don't teach.'

Sir William Lamb, Member of Council for the Department of Finance, was borne by the stream to our sides. The simile will hardly stand conscientious examination, for the stream was a thin one and did no more than trickle past, while Sir William weighed fifteen stone, and was so eminent that it could never inconvenience him at its deepest. Dora detached her gaze from the pictures and turned her back upon them; I saw the measure of precaution. It was unavailing, however. 'What have we here?' said Sir William. Dora removed her person from his line of vision, and he saw what we had there.

'The work of a friend of yours?' Sir William was spoken of as a 'cautious' man. He had risen to his present distinction on stepping-stones of mistakes he conspicuously had not made.

'No,' said Dora, 'we were wondering who the artist could be.'

Sir William looked at the studies, and had a happy thought. 'If you ask me, I should say a child of ten,' he said. He was also known as a man of humour.

'Miss Harris had just remarked a certain immaturity,' I ventured.

'Oh, well,' said Sir William, 'this isn't the Royal Academy, is it? I always say it's very good of people to send their things here at all. And some of them are not half bad-I should call this year's average very high indeed.'

'Are you pleased with the picture that has taken your prize, Sir William?' asked Dora.

'I have bought it.' Sir William's chest underwent before our eyes an expansion of conscious virtue. Living is so expensive in Simla; the purchase of a merely decorative object takes almost the proportion of an act of religion, even by a Member of Council drawing four hundred pounds a month.

'First-rate it is, first-rate. Have you seen it? "Our Camp in Tirah." Natives cooking in the foreground, fellows standing about smoking, and a whole pile of tinned stores dumped down in one corner, exactly as they would be, don't you know! Oh, I think the Committee made a very good choice indeed, a very good choice.'

Sir William moved on, and Dora was free to send me an expressive glance. 'Isn't that just LIKE this place?' she demanded. 'Let me see, the Viceroy's medal, the Society's silver medal, five prizes from Members of Council. Highly Commended's as thick as blackberries, and these perfectly fresh, original, admirable things completely ignored. What an absurd, impossible corner of the earth it is!'

'You look very cross, you two,' said Mrs. Sinclair, trailing past. 'Come and see the crazy china exhibit, all made of little bits, you know. They say the photograph frames are simply lovely.'

Mrs. Sinclair's invitation was not sincere. Miss Harris was able to answer it with a laugh and a wave. We remained beside the serious fact of exhibits 97-103.

'Who are the judges this year?' I asked, not that I did not know precisely who they were likely to be. There is a custom in these matters, and I had been part of Simla for eleven years.

Dora took the catalogue from my hand and turned its pages over.

'Mr. Cathcart, of course; the Private Secretary to the Viceroy would be on the Committee almost ex officio, wouldn't he? Impossible to conceive a Private Secretary to the Viceroy whose opinion would not be valuable upon any head. The member for Public Works-I suppose he can build bridges, or could once, therefore he can draw, or could once; besides, look at his precedence and his pay! General Haycock-isn't he head of the Ordnance Department? I can't think of any other reason for putting him on. Oh yes-he's a K.C.B., and he is inventing a way of taking coloured photographs. Mr. Tilley, the old gentleman that teaches elementary drawing to the little girls in the diocesan school, that's all right. And Mr. Jay, of course, because Mr. Jay's water-colours are the mainstay of the exhibition, and he must be given a chance of expressing his opinion of them.' She handed me back the catalogue. 'I have never been really angry with them before,' she said.

'Are you really angry now?' I asked.

'Furious,' Dora replied, and indeed her face expressed indignation. Its lines were quite tense, and a spark shone oddly in the middle of the eyes. One could not credit her with beauty, but as her lady friends were fond of saying, there was something 'more' in her face. I saw a good deal more at this moment, and it gave me pleasure, as all her feelings did when they came out like that. I hasten to add that she was not unpleasing; her features had a symmetry and a mobility, and her eyes could take any transient charm they chose to endow themselves with; though there were moments when she compared very badly with the other young ladies of Simla with their high spirits and their pretty complexions, very badly indeed. Those were occasions when the gay monotony of the place pressed, I imagine, a little heavily upon her, and the dullness she felt translated itself in her expression. But she was by no means unpleasing.

'I must go and see Lady Pilkey's picture,' I said.

'What is the use?' said Dora. 'It's a landscape in oils-a view of the Himalayas, near Narkanda. There are the snows in the background, very thin and visionary through a gap in the trees, and two hills, one hill on each side. Dark green trees, pine-trees, with a dead one in the left foreground covered with a brilliant red creeper. Right foreground occupied by a mountain path and a solitary native figure with its back turned. Society's silver medal.'

'When did you see it?' I asked.

'I haven't seen it-this year. But I saw the one she sent last, and the one the year before that. You can trust my memory, really.'

'No,' I said, 'I can't. I'm dining there tonight. I must have an original impression.'

'Congratulate her on the warm blaze of colour in the foreground. It's perfectly safe,' urged Miss Harris, but I felt compelled to go myself to see lady Pilkey's landscape. When I returned I found her still sitting in grave absorption before the studies that had taken us so by surprise. Her face was full of a soft new light; I had never before seen the spring touched in her that could flood it like that.

'You were very nearly right,' I announced; 'but the blaze of colour was in the middle distance, and there was a torrent in the foreground that quite put it out. And the picture does take the Society's silver medal.'

'I can not decide,' she replied without looking at me, 'between the Kattiawar fair thing and those hills in the rain. I can only have one-father won't hear of more than one.'

'You can have two,' I said bluntly, so deeply interested I was in the effect the things had on her. 'And I will have a third for myself. I can't withstand those apricot-trees.'

I thought there was moisture in the eyes she turned upon me, an unusual thing-a most unusual thing-in Dora Harris; but she winked it back, if it was there, too quickly for any certainty.

'You are a dear,' she said. Once or twice before she had called me a dear. It reminded me, as nothing else ever did, that I was a contemporary of her father's. It is a feeble confession, but I have known myself refrain from doing occasional agreeable things apprehending that she might call me a dear.

A dog of no sort of caste stood in the veranda and barked at me offensively. I picked up a stone, and he vanished like the dog of a dream into the house. It was such a small house that it wasn't on the municipal map at all: it looked as if someone had built it for amusement with anything that was lying about. Nevertheless, it had a name, it was called Amy Villa, freshly painted in white letters on a shiny black board, and nailed against the nearest tree in the orthodox Simla fashion.

It looked as if the owner of the place had named it as a duty towards his tenant, the board was so new, and in that case the reflection presented itself that the tenant might have cooperated to call it something else. It was disconcerting somehow to find that our dove had perched, even temporarily, in Amy Villa. Nor was it soothing to discover that the small white object stuck in the corner of the board was Mr. Ingersoll Armour's card.

In Simla we do not stick our cards about in that way at the mercy of the wind and the weather; we paint our names neatly under the names of our houses with 'I.C.S.' for Indian Civil Service, or 'P.W.D.' for Public Works Department, or whatever designation we are entitled to immediately after, so that there can be no mistake. This strikes newcomers sometimes as a little professional, especially when a hand accompanies, pointing; but it is the only possible way where there are no streets and no numbers, but where houses are dropped about a hilltop as if they had fallen from a pepper-pot. In sticking his card out like that Mr. Armour seemed to imagine himself au quatrieme or au cinquieme somewhere on the south side of the Seine; it betrayed rather a ridiculous lack of conformity. He was high enough up, however, to give any illusion; I had to stop to find the wind to announce myself. There was nobody else to do it if I except the dog.

I walked into the veranda and shouted. Then I saw that one end of it was partly glazed off, and inside sat a young man in his shirt-sleeves with his back to the door.

In reply he called out, 'That you, Rosario?' and I stood silent, taken somewhat aback.

There was only one Rosario in Simla, and he was a subordinate in my own office. Again the hateful need to explain. Between subordinate clerks and officials in Simla there is a greater gulf fixed than was ever imagined in parable. Besides, Rosario had a plain strain of what we call 'the country' in him, a plain strain, that is, of the colour of the country. It was certainly the first time in my official career that I had been mistaken for Rosario.

Armour turned round and saw me-that I was a stranger.

He got up at once. 'Oh,' he said, 'I thought it was Rosario.

'It isn't,' I replied, 'my name is Philips. May I ask whether you were expecting Mr. Rosario? I can come again, you know.'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. Sit down. He may drop in or he may not-I rather thought he would today. It's a pull up, isn't it, from the Mall? Have a whisky and soda.'

I stood on the threshold spellbound. It was just the smell that bound me, the good old smell of oil paints and turpentine and mediums and varnish and new canvas that you never by any chance put your nose into in any part of Asia. It carried me back twenty years to old haunts, old friends, old joys, ideals, theories. Ah, to be young and have a temperament! For I had one then-that instant in Armour's veranda proved it to me forever.

'No thanks,' I said. 'If you don't mind I'll just have the smell.'

The young fellow knew at once that I liked the smell. 'Well, have a chair, anyhow,' he said, and took one himself and sat down opposite me, letting his lean brown hands fall between his knees.

'Do you mind,' I said, 'if for a minute I sit still and look round?'

He understood again.

'I haven't brought much,' he said, 'I left pretty near everything in Paris.'

'You have brought a world.' Then after a moment, 'Did you do that?' I asked, nodding towards a canvas tacked against the wall. It was the head of a half-veiled Arab woman turned away.

The picture was in the turning away, and the shadow the head-covering made over the cheek and lips.

'Lord, no! That's Dagnan Bouveret. I used to take my things to him, and one day he gave me that. You have an eye,' he added, but without patronage. 'It's the best thing I've got.'

I felt the warmth of an old thrill.

'Once upon a time,' I said, 'I was allowed to have an eye.' The wine, untasted all those years, went to my head. 'That's a vigorous bit above,' I continued.

'Oh, well! It isn't really up to much, you know. It's Rosario's. He photographs mostly, but he has a notion of colour.'

'Really?' said I, thinking with regard to my eye that the sun of that atrocious country had put it out. 'I expect I've lost it,' I said aloud.

'Your eye? Oh, you'll easily get a fresh one. Do you go home for the exhibitions?'

'I did once,' I confessed. 'My first leave. A kind of paralysis overtakes one here. Last time I went for the grouse.'

He glanced at me with his light clear eyes as if for the first time he encountered a difficulty.

'It's a magnificent country for painting,' he said.

'But not for pictures,' I rejoined. He paid no attention, staring at the ground and twisting one end of his moustache.

'The sun on those old marble tombs-broad sun and sand-'

'You mean somewhere about Delhi.'

'I couldn't get anywhere near it.' He was not at that moment anywhere near me. 'But I have thought out a trick or two-I mean to have another go when it cools off again down there.' He returned with a smile, and I saw how delicate his face was. The smile turned down with a little gentle mockery in its lines. I had seen that particular smile only on the faces of one or two beautiful women. It had a borrowed air upon a man, like a tiara or an earring.

'There's plenty to paint,' he said, looking at me with an air of friendly speculation.

'Indeed, yes. And it has never been done. We are sure it has never been done.'

'"We"-you mean people generally?'

'Not at all. I mean Miss Harris, Miss Harris and myself.'

'Your daughter?'

'My name is Philips,' I reminded him pleasantly, remembering that the intelligence of clever people is often limited to a single art. 'Miss Harris is the daughter of Mr. Edward Harris, Secretary of the Government of India in the Legislative Department. She is fond of pictures. We have a good many tastes in common. We have always suspected that India had never been painted, and when we saw your things at the Town Hall we knew it.'

His queer eyes dilated, and he blushed.

'Oh,' he said, 'it's only one interpretation. It all depends on what a fellow sees. No fellow can see everything.'

'Till you came,' I insisted, 'nobody had seen anything.'

He shook his head, but I could read in his face that this was not news to him.

'That is mainly what I came up to tell you,' I continued, 'to beg that you will go on and on. To hope that you will stay a long time and do a great deal. It is such an extraordinary chance that any one should turn up who can say what the country really means.'

He stuck his hands in his pockets with a restive movement. 'Oh, don't make me feel responsible,' he said, 'I hate that;' and then suddenly he remembered his manners. 'But it's certainly nice of you to think so,' he added.

There was something a little unusual in his inflection which led me to ask at this point whether he was an American, and to discover that he came from somewhere in Wisconsin, not directly, but by way of a few years in London and Paris. This accounted in a way for the effect of freedom in any fortune about him for which I already liked him, and perhaps partly for the look of unembarrassed inquiry and experiment which sat so lightly in his unlined face. He came, one realized, out of the fermentation of new conditions; he never could have been the product of our limits and systems and classes in England. His surroundings, his 'things,' as he called them, were as old as the sense of beauty, but he seemed simply to have put them where he could see them, there was no pose in their arrangement. They were all good, and his delight in them was plain; but he was evidently in no sense a connoisseur beyond that of natural instinct. Some of those he had picked up in India I could tell him about, but I had no impression that he would remember what I said. There was one Bokhara tapestry I examined with a good deal of interest.

'Yes,' he said, 'they told me I shouldn't get anything as good as that out here, so I brought it,' but I had to explain to him why it was anomalous that this should be so.

'It came a good many miles over desert from somewhere,' he remarked, as I made a note of inquiry as to the present direction of trade in woven goods from Persia, 'I had to pound it for a week to get the dust out.'

We spent an hour looking over work he had done down in the plains, and then I took my leave. It did not occur to me at the moment to ask Armour to come to the club or to offer to do anything for him; all the hospitality, all that was worth offering seemed so much more at his disposition than at mine. I only asked if I might come again, mentioning somewhat shyly that I must have the opportunity of adding, at my leisure, to those of his pictures that were already mine by transaction with the secretary of the Art Exhibition. I left him so astonished that this had happened, so plainly pleased, that I was certain he had never sold anything before in his life. This impression gave me the uplifted joy of a discoverer to add to the satisfactions I had already drawn from the afternoon; and I almost bounded down the hill to the Mall. I left the pi dog barking in the veranda, and I met Mr. Rosario coming up, but in my unusual elation I hardly paused to consider either of them further.

The mare and her groom were waiting on the Mall, and it was only when I got on her back that the consciousness visited me of something forgotten. It was my mission-to propose to take Armour, if he were 'possible,' to call upon the Harrises. Oh, well, he was possible enough; I supposed he possessed a coat, though he hadn't been wearing it; and I could arrange it by letter. Meanwhile, as was only fair, I turned the mare in the direction of the drawing-room where I had reason to believe that Miss Dora Harris was quenching her impatience in tea.