"Now, don't put it on! Frankly—isn't she relieved? Hasn't she borne the infliction like a saint?"
The blood stirred visibly under her pallor. "It was not an infliction. Your writing's wonderful. Quite uncanny—the way you get inside people and things. If there's more—go on."
"There's a lot more. But I'm not going on—even at her Majesty's express command!—Look here, Rose ... let be." He suddenly changed his tone. "I can feel how it bothers you. So—why pretend...?"
She looked down; twisting her opal ring, making the delicate colours flash and change.
"It's a pity—isn't it?"—she seemed to muse aloud—"that more than half of life is made up of pretending. It becomes rather a delicate problem—fixing boundary lines. I do admire your gift, Roy. And you're so intensely human. But I confess, I—I am jerked by parts of your theme. Doesn't all this animosity and open vilification affect your own feeling about—things, the least bit?"
"Yes. It does. Only—not in your way. It makes me unhappy, because the real India—snowed under with specious talk and bitter invective—has less chance now than ever of being understood by those who can't see below the surface."
"Me—for instance?"
He sighed. "Oh, scores and scores of you, here and at Home. And scores of others, who have far less excuse. That's why one feels bound to do what one can...."
His thoughts on that score went too deep for utterance.
But Rose was engaged in her own purely personal deliberations.