Nevertheless, after three more years of monotony endured on lethargic river-boat, irresponsive mule-back, or at the inexorable office-desk, always, more or less, drawn apart from his fellow-men, he suspected that it was nearing the time when he should be born again. It was so long since he had slept well at night. Sometimes he imagined the pain in his heart had lulled, but each mail-day, blank of news he did not expect, roused it again.
He could have remained longer at head-quarters now, had he so chosen, but Cyprian never really fitted in with his pioneering countrymen of the East, and round about his part of the world there were few women.
Burma had solved the problem of loneliness for the forest officers and others in her own particular way. And Cyprian, in the noonday of his life, tormented by insomnia, had begun to look upon it as an inevitable way.
A dull throbbing ache in his temples made him lay down his pen. He could take Leave, of course. The idea nauseated him. For what reason should he wish to take Leave now? Even if Ferlie were unhappy with the tall futile individual he had seen her marry, what could Cyprian do? For him the road stretched thus solitary to the end of the horizon, lengthened by the fruitless wooing of the sleep that had deserted his tired plodding brain. If he stopped working, inaction would only increase the pressure of thoughts which work held at bay.
* * * * * *
And then ... the thing happened so quickly. There was no battling with decisions; no weighing pros and cons, and the Daimon had simply held its peace.
One day as he walked up the hill to his inelaborate bungalow he began to nurse a delirious fancy that the Country, herself, was holding his head in an iron grip, and only the Country herself could draw out those claws pressing into his temples on either side.
And, when he reached the four-roomed residence, the Country Herself was awaiting him, as it had awaited, to some purpose, many another transplanted Briton whose national sense of proportion had become blunted after long rooting in alien soil.
She sat there, patiently, outside the dyed bamboo chick, a lemon-coloured lungi swathed about her hips, a white muslin jacket concealing her contours, and frangipani blossoms nestling like stars in the midnight of her hair. Her age, was, perhaps, sixteen, but her smile revealed that placidity of soul suggesting many adventurous incarnations. They called her Hla Byu, or Beauty Fair.
Her father was with her: a practical, soft-spoken, obliging old gentleman, who had heard the Thakin was a lonely Thakin, and unmarried, and thought that, for the exceptionally reasonable sum of Rs.200 something might be arranged to the mutual advantage of all parties.