Elizabeth broke off suddenly.
"I don't believe even you understand what I mean, daddy," she said.
"Yes, my dear, I do," said he. "I could tell you exactly what you mean. But have your say first; you have not nearly done yet. I will tell you what you mean when you have finished."
Elizabeth laughed.
"That will be a good thing," she said, "because, though I know that I mean something, I often have not the least idea what it is. Daddy, I wish I was a boy so terribly sometimes, and I know you do too. If I was a boy I would get up now and kiss you, and walk straight off into the direction of where the moon is just going to rise. I would have adventures—oh, such adventures!"
"My dear, you would get malaria, and come home next morning with a violent headache and ask me for some quinine."
She shook her head.
"You are wrong," she said. "I wouldn't come back even to you for years, not until I had learned what it all means. I would be afraid of nothing; I would shrink from nothing. Perhaps I should see Malaria herself in the jungle down there by the Indus—a tall, white-faced woman, with golden irises to her eyes, and I would talk to her and learn about her. I would go into the temple of the Brahmins at Benares and listen to them preaching sedition. I would sit by the corpse as it burned by the river bank, watching it, oh, so quietly, and loving it. I would go into the opium dens and learn how to dream.... Learn how to dream! I wonder if that is what I want to do? I think it must be that. Sometimes when I am playing I begin to dream, and just as I am getting deep I strike a false chord and wake myself up, or mamma comes in and says it is time for me to go driving with her."
Elizabeth had forgotten about the enormous tea she had intended to eat, and still sat upright on the edge of her chair, looking out over the gathering night. Already in the swiftly darkening dusk the colours were withdrawn from the flower-beds, and only the heavy odours gave token of their blossoming. A streak of dwindling orange lingered in the west; above, in the fathomless blue, stars that five minutes before had been but minute pinpricks of luminance were grown to yellow lamps and globes of light. Somewhere in the lines a bugle suddenly blared out its message to the stillness and was silent again. A little farther off a tom-tom beat with endless iteration.
Then she spoke again, more rapidly.