“Yes, and it isn’t all sordid--don’t think I mean that, Miss Claes. Sometimes when he’s satisfied with his story, so that he can forget it, we have such good times. He’s such a playboy, such a playmate. Some old terrible longing comes over me when we are close like that, just to be like one of the Mediterranean women, who know nothing but to replenish the earth. But it doesn’t do to dwell on that,” Pidge finished with an impressive quietness of tone. “One thing I learned rather well, before it was too late.” “What’s that, Pidge?” “That this isn’t the time or place for us to bring a little baby into the world.” XXVI THE HANGING SOCK NAGAR was changed. On the day that Richard Cobden reached Ahmedabad, he encountered one of the surprises of his life. It was like meeting a man out in the freedom of the world, whom one had only known before in prison. Two years in the East had sharpened Dicky’s eyes to note something in Nagar’s face that he had been unable to detect before. Dicky called it cleanliness and calm, but this brought up the old difficulty which he never missed in his work of writing--that at best, words only suggest, only intimate. In America Nagar had looked dark; here he looked fair. There he had moved in and out as one of the colored men; here he was one of the elect. There he had lived in the midst of silences and mysterious inhibitions, diminished by the garments of Western civilization; here he was white-robed in the sunlight, like young Gautama in his father’s garden. Of course, Dicky knew that the change was more substantial than that of garb or place. He could only repeat that Nagar seemed free in his own mind. In the first few moments at the station in Ahmedabad, Dicky had himself felt unwashed and unwholesome, as no man ever made him feel before. His hand went up to his chin. Yes, he had shaved that morning, but realizing it did not help much. It wasn’t the grime of travel that hurt him, but the smear of his recent mental and emotional overturning, the ugliness of all those days in the red room at Bombay, and the sense of failure and loss he lived with constantly since the coming of the letter from Pidge. “... And the Little Man is actually here in Ahmedabad, and not a myth?” Dicky had asked, as they drew out of the crowd at the station. “Not only that, but you are to go to the _Ashrama_ now, if you will. He is eager to have you come.” “His house first?” Dicky asked. “It is also the house in which I live,” said Nagar. “You mean you wish to put me up in your quarters?” “If you would not mind our great simplicity.” “Thanks, I should like that,” said Dicky, “but I think it would be better for me to follow the usual course of a foreigner and find hotel quarters.”