high and strange whether the sun is in his tabernacle or the clouds are on the hills. But it is there always, you can see it for yourself. Go out into the garden, not for a stroll, but for a day. The week has brought me--and how can I be too grateful--a new and personal feeling about this exquisite thing that passes. Waking in the blackness of the very small hours I find a delicate gladness in the thought of the far sure wing of the day. Already while we lie in the dark it brushes the curve of the world in that far East which is so much farther, already on a thousand slopes and rice fields the grey dawn is beginning, beginning; and sleeping huts and silent palaces stand emergent, marvellously pathetic to the imagination. Even while I think, it is crisping the sullen waves of the Yellow Sea; presently some outlying reef of palms will find its dim picture drawn, and then we too, high in the middle of Hindostan, will swing under this vast and solemn operation. With that precision which reigns in heaven our turn will also come, and in my garden and over the hills will walk another day. CHAPTER III There is a right side and a wrong side to the mountain of Simla, for it was a mountain eight thousand feet high and equally important long before it became the summer headquarters of the Government of India, and a possible pin-point on the map. These mountains run across the tip of India, you will remember, due east and west, so that if you live on one of them you are very apt to live due north or south. On the south side you look down, on a clear day, quite to the plains, if that is any advantage; you see the Punjab lying there as flat as the palm of your hand and streaked with rivers, and the same sun that burns all India bakes down upon you. On the north side you have turned your back on Hindostan and sit upon the borders of Thibet, a world of mountains bars your horizon, a hermit Mahatma might abide with you in his ashes and have his meditations disturbed by no thought of missionaries or income tax. Your prospect is all blue and purple with a wonderful edge sometimes of white; cool winds blow out of it and fan your roses on the hottest day. Out there is no-man’s-land, where the coolies come from, or perhaps the country of a little king who wears his crown embroidered on his turban, and in India who recks of little kings? Out there are no Secretariats, no Army Headquarters, no precedence, probably very little pay, but the vast blue freedom of it! And all expanded, all extended just at your front door. * * * * *