“A somewhat unlucky party. Aziz and old Godbole were both ill after it too.”
“I was not ill—it is far too vague to mention: it is all mixed up with my private affairs. I enjoyed the singing . . . but just about then a sort of sadness began that I couldn’t detect at the time . . . no, nothing as solid as sadness: living at half pressure expresses it best. Half pressure. I remember going on to polo with Mr. Heaslop at the Maidan. Various other things happened—it doesn’t matter what, but I was under par for all of them. I was certainly in that state when I saw the caves, and you suggest (nothing shocks or hurts me)—you suggest that I had an hallucination there, the sort of thing—though in an awful form—that makes some women think they’ve had an offer of marriage when none was made.”
“You put it honestly, anyhow.”
“I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere.”
Liking her better, he smiled and said, “It’ll get us to heaven.”
“Will it?”
“If heaven existed.”
“Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?” she said, looking at him shyly.
“I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.”
“How can that be?”