“I spare you the family quarrels. I can never go back. But I was spurred--spurred to take some wild leap; and I took it. Six years ago I came out. First I went to a doctor and his wife at Cawnpore. They had a wonderful knowledge of the Indian peoples, and there I learned Hindustani and much else. Then he died. But an aunt had left me two hundred pounds, and I could wait a little and choose; and so I came here.” It interested me. The courage that pale elastic type of woman has! “Have you ever regretted it? Would they take you back if you failed?” “Never, to both questions,” she said, smiling. “Life is glorious. I’ve drunk of a cup I never thought to taste; and if I died tomorrow I should know I had done right. I rejoice in every moment I live--even when Winifred and I are wrestling with arithmetic.” “I shouldn’t have thought life was very easy with Lady Meryon.” “Oh, she is kind enough in an indifferent sort of way. I am not the persecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all. But that is all on the surface and does not matter. It is India I care for-the people, the sun, the infinite beauty. It was coming home. You would laugh if I told you I knew Peshawar long before I came here. Knew it--walked here, lived. Before there were English in India at all.” She broke off. “You won’t understand.” “Oh, I have had that feeling, too,” I said patronizingly. “If one has read very much about a place-” “That was not quite what I meant. Never mind. The people, the place--that is the real thing to me. All this is the dream.” The sweep of her hand took in not only Winifred and myself, but the general’s stately residence, which to blaspheme in Peshawar is rank infidelity. “By George, I would give thousands to feel that! I can’t get out of Europe here. I want to write, Miss Loring,” I found myself saying. “I’d done a bit, and then the war came and blew my life to pieces. Now I want to get inside the skin of the East, and I can’t do it. I see it from outside, with a pane of glass between. No life in it. If you feel as you say, for God’s sake be my interpreter!”