She turned her hands outward with the expressive gesture of her race. "That foolish sadness we can push away. What matter for anything—now? I rest—I breathe—I am here——!" Her smile shone out, sudden and brilliant. "Almost like England—this big green garden and children and sound of playing tennis. Let us be young again. Let us, for a small time, not remember that all outside is Jaipur and the desert—dusty and hot and cruel; and dark places full of secret and terrible things. Here we are safe. Here it is almost England!"
Her gallant appeal so moved him, and the lighter vein so charmingly became her, that Roy humoured her mood willingly enough....
When his tea arrived, she played hostess with an alluring mixture of shyness and happy importance, capping his lively sallies with the quick wit of old days. And when Suráj was announced—"Oh, please—may I see him?" she begged eagerly as a child.
Suráj graciously permitted his velvet nose to be stroked by alien fingers, light as rose petals. Then Roy sprang into the saddle; and Arúna stood watching him as he went—sais and dog trotting to heel—a graceful lonely figure, shadowed by her semi-transparent parasol.
At a bend in the drive, where a sentry sprang to attention, he turned for a parting salute. Her answering gesture might or might not have been intended for him. She at least knew all about the need for being discreet. For, on leaving the tea-table, they had passed from the dream of 'almost England' into the dusty actuality of Jaipur.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Instantly.
CHAPTER V.
"Broadly speaking, there are two blocks of people—East and West; people who interfere and people who don't interfere; ... East is a fatalist, West is an idealist, of a clumsy sort."—Stacy Aumonier.