He seemed to meditate a moment on that; then said slowly:
“It appears you have experience of the very things that interest me. Tell me—for I have been so long in the wilds— Is there any writer nowadays taking the place with regard to things Indian that Lafcadio Hearn did with things Japanese? A man who gets at the soul of it as well as the beautiful surface?”
With her eyes on the ground and a sense of something startling in the air, she answered with a question.
“Have you ever heard of V. Lydiat’s books?”
There was a puzzled furrow between his eyebrows.
“Not that I know of. Up in Kulu and beyond, the new books don’t penetrate. A man or a woman?”
“People are not certain. The initial might mean either. But the critics all say a man. The last is called the ‘The Unstruck Music,’ the one before ‘The Dream of Stars.’ The first, ‘The Ninefold Flower.’ ”
“Beautiful names,” he said. “Can I get them here?”
“I can lend them to you.”
They talked long after that, in a curiously intimate way that gave her secret but intense happiness. It was almost in fear that she asked when he was going on and where.