'I'll take your word for it,' he answered lightly.
She did not move, but her eyes sought his.
'C'est la peste, monsieur,' she said in a low voice.
He looked at her for a second.
'C'est la peste, mademoiselle,' he replied with a bow.
[CHAPTER XIV]
IN THE TOILS
On the evening after the ball, Chris Davenant sat in the pretty little drawing-room of which his wife was so proud, looking helplessly at Lala Râm Nâth, who had come in on business. Yet the helplessness was not due, Chris felt, to anything in Râm Nâth. It was due to himself, to his own actions. The feeling comes to most of us at times; for the story of the man-created monster which turns and rends its creator is as old as the world. It began with the serpent in Paradise, and will only end when humanity, by ceasing to desire that which it has not, ceases to put itself in the power of its own imaginings.
Râm Nâth, however, had not reached this stage of development, and was still supremely satisfied with his creature. 'Surely it is out of the question,' he was saying in the fluent English which came from constant speechifying, 'that in the present crisis, when the eyes of all India are fixed on what we Nushaporites will tolerate, in the event of this plague epidemic supervening, and, alas! bringing in its train interferences with the liberty of the subjects beyond bearing even to the long-suffering races of India, that you should stand aloof from us, the recognised defenders of that liberty!'
Chris leant his head on his hand wearily. In truth he felt aloof from everything in God's round world, save that old man of the sea whom he had invited, under the name of civilisation, to sit on his shoulders.