"Well, I'd scarcely say I know the world," he corrected; "only a few Indian and Persian cities—and some of the more southern watering-places of Asia. I was stationed for a while at Singapore."
"Stationed? You mean in the interest of your firm—or were you in the Army then, like your brother?"
"In the Army," he answered, again experiencing that insurrection against falsehood.
"I see," she commented. A wistful sigh. "I think I should have been a man. Penang, Shanghai and Zanzibar, those cities with such thrillingly wicked names, fascinate me; Tibet and inner China, all the far places, call. There's something pagan and magnificent about it—a sort of broken thread in me that matches the tapestry of it all. Oh, I'm sure I should have been a man! I know if I were, I'd be an explorer and hunt among the ruins of the Phœnicians and the Incas, and those other remnants of ancient civilizations."
Her words brought a tightening of the cords in his throat. Another who dreamed of the fabulous isles! But, for a reason he did not analyze, he could not place her in the picture she painted. Always, to him, the music-room—white hands in the dusk.
"But I'll have my fling," she continued; "only in a mild degree. My brother's home is in Burma. I'm going to live with him, and we plan to slip off every now and then. A trip to Malaya or Borneo or Java—I've heard so much of the beauty of Batavia—or up the other way to Siam. Siam! Isn't the very name magic? Bejewelled dancers and emerald Buddhas and theaters where they pantomime ancient tales!... I'm not a reformist in the least, but there's one sort of 'uplift work' I'd love to do—a 'purpose in life,' as some call it. I'd like to visit the far places and return home and lecture to those whose boundaries are their own yards, and try to make them understand that on the other side of the world there are civilizations so much mellower than their own, and doctrines of existence that have nothing to do with mints and stock exchanges!"
Her voice was an expression of the high arcanum that he had glimpsed in her eyes. Here was a woman who possessed the rare triumvirate of flesh and mind and soul; whose gifts to men were other than brief summer passions and earthly donations. He felt that it was irreverent when he asked if he might smoke. As he touched a match to his cheroot, she went on:
"Oh, the West knows so little about the East, and the East so little about the West, that it isn't strange that one misunderstands the other.... But I'm boring you with this talk," she broke off irrelevantly.
"Won't you go on?"—earnestly.
She smiled. "It's impertinence for me to tamper with mysteries that I haven't explored. No,"—still smiling—"I'm going back to my ken—to Siamese dancers and pantomime shows. And that reminds me, is it safe to go to a native theater? I'd feel as if I'd missed part of Calcutta if I didn't see a Bengali performance."