She had had a couple of years of it and had been astonished, occasionally alarmed, then again shocked, had laughed sometimes and then again been annoyed; and at last, with the reasonableness of her nature and the practical side of her artistic soul, had grown accustomed to it all. She had grown accustomed to the toe-exercises, to the manure around the roses; she had grown accustomed to her husband, who was no longer a human being, no longer a man, but an official. She had suffered a great deal, she had written despairing letters, she had been sick with longing for the home of her parents, she had been on the verge of making a sudden departure, but she had not gone, so as not to leave her husband in his loneliness, and she had accustomed herself to things and made the best of them. She had not only the soul of an artist--she played the piano exceptionally well--but also the heart of a plucky little woman. She had gone on loving her husband and she felt that, after all, she provided him with a pleasant home. She gave serious attention to the education of her child. And, once she had become accustomed to things, she grew less unjust and suddenly saw much of what was beautiful in India; admired the stately grace of a coco-palm, the exquisite, paradisal flavour of the Indian fruits, the glory of the blossoming trees; and, in the inland districts, she had realized the noble majesty of nature, the harmony of the undulating hills, the faery forests of gigantic ferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the shimmering terraces of the flooded rice-fields, with the tender green of the young paddy; and the character of the Javanese had been a very revelation to her: his elegance, his grace, his salutation, his dancing; his aristocratic distinction, so often evidently handed down directly from a noble race, from an age-old chivalry, now modernized into a diplomatic suppleness, worshipping authority by nature and inevitably resigned under the yoke of the rulers whose gold-lace arouses his innate respect.