Well, he wanted to see life, to understand it, to feel it. He had travelled 7000 miles to do so. He was very keen to begin, he wanted to see life all round, up and down, inside and out; he told me so as we looked out on the palm trees and the glimpse of the red road beyond and the unending stream of brown men and women upon it. I began to show him life in the East. I took him to the clubs; the club where they play tennis and gossip, the club where they play Bridge and gossip, the club where they just sit in long chairs and gossip. I introduced him to scores of men who asked him to have a drink, and to scores of women who asked him whether he liked Colombo. He didn't get on with them at all, he said 'No thank you' to the men and 'Yes, very much' to the women. He was shy and felt uncomfortable, out of his element with these fat flanelled merchants, fussy civil servants, and their whining wives and daughters. In the evening we sat on my verandah and talked. We talked about life and his novels and romance and love even. I liked him, you know; he interested me, there was something in him which had never come out. But he had got hold of life at the wrong end somehow, he couldn't deal with it or the people in it at all. He had the novelist's view, of life and--with all respect to you, Alderton--it doesn't work. I suppose the devil came into me that evening. Reynolds had talked so much about seeing life that at last I thought: "By Jove, I'll show him a side of life _he_'s never seen before at any rate." I called the servant and told him to fetch two rickshaws. We bowled along the dusty roads past the lake and into the native quarter. All the smells of the East rose up and hung heavy upon the damp hot air in the narrow streets. I watched Reynolds' face in the moonlight, the scared look which always showed upon it: I very nearly repented and turned back. Even now I'm not sure whether I'm sorry that I didn't. At any rate I didn't, and at last we drew up in front of a low mean looking house standing back a little from the road. There was one of those queer native wooden doors made in two halves; the top half was open and through it one saw an empty whitewashed room lighted by a lamp fixed in the wall. We went in and I shut the door top and bottom behind us. At the other end were two steps leading up to another room. Suddenly there came the sound of bare feet running and giggles of laughter, and ten or twelve girls, some naked and some half clothed in bright red or bright orange cloths, rushed down the steps upon us. We were surrounded, embraced, caught up in their arms and carried into the next room. We lay upon sofas with them. There was nothing but sofas and an old piano in the room.