"No, I have been here only four years—three years in India before that. My ways have not been interesting. Since you came they have all been cheapened. I see I have wasted my time—" "Now that is a good saying. Thank you. Sometimes, Sir Romney, you are very attractive—" "It is quite true. The things that interested men here—I mean the Americans and English, the big exploiters—have not held me long, though I have worked with them and for them. Always the different, the more hidden things called me. Until yesterday I thought I was at least doing decently well. But I see you have somehow touched the core of things. I’ve been puttering—" "At least, it is good not to be considered either wicked or insane," she answered. "I usually draw that. I wonder that you like my things. Sometimes I have even felt myself that I am a little mad. The first time that came to me was in England the first year after the tiger. It was a summer Sunday morning—the earth was risen in beauty—birds singing as they only sing in the sun-mists that follow a night of rain. It was a seething of bird-song, of colour and fragrance—just a year after the tiger. As I listened, the fury of longing that I live with came upon me in high tide—and then in the midst of it, I heard the sound of church-bells from the village. It was like a gray cloud, an evil odour, a catarrhal voice.... Spectres of the English Sabbath. People stifled me for days after that.... But I talk and talk and I want your story now. See, we have been together all day and some of yesterday and you have listened—" "I am not through listening. So much of me was asleep before yesterday." She smiled swiftly at him. "You shall not escape now that you are so good. See, the night is coming. Everything is here. Longstruth’s is worth coming up the river for. China is sweeter here and undefiled. I would be hideously lonely without you—and you have not told me who and what you are. Why, listen, I don’t often ask a man to talk about himself." "I get the force of that. It’s only that what I have is drab and young. I would have made it different had I known you were coming—" "Sir Romney—there’s a pull about you. You do not diminish. Oh, I must know all about you now—" "I hear and obey," he said. *3*