Some atrophied instinct tried to whisper dead words to Cyprian's wearied spirit as he paused in the doorway, one hand separating the rattling strands of bead and bamboo, to gaze at Hla Byu with bodily, but not mental, concentration. In response to that fixed regard her smile intensified, becoming a happy thing reflected again in her eyes.
"Ohe, Thakin "—and her voice was honey-soft—"It may be in my hands to heal the river-fever."
Thus he construed the quick-spoken sentence. His smarting lids were lowered in token that he did not wish to argue the matter to its close. But he held aside the pattering curtains for her to enter and let them fall again behind him with the noise of dried leaves laughing in a hot breeze.
* * * * * *
From the first the experiment acted as a narcotic. He had never discussed with other men of his acquaintance the modes and methods employed by all who adopt what is generally known as the Burma Habit.
During the War, just after his own swift flight from the mines to the trenches, and his almost immediate rejection after that early knock-out, an opportunity had been afforded him, by chance, of observing the question from the viewpoint of the British soldier.
It clothed in an unearthly beauty what had, till then, struck Cyprian as wholly sordid and unclean. But that soldier had certainly taken part in an exceptionally pathetic human drama, which he proceeded to relate with the utmost naiveté, flavoured by almost untranslatable epithets of Tommyese.
One travelled third in trains those days unless one was the engine-driver or had made a corner in lead before it became the staff of life.
There was a lot of khaki coming up from Southampton; tired, wet-looking khaki which had seen better days but none so worthy of its cloth. It steamed with damp because the Mother Country had greeted the shipload of travellers from across the Channel with her customary flood of hopeless tears. The slippery platforms were picturesque, after a fashion, from behind a window-pane of the lingering train. It was waiting for the hospital train to leave first.
Then three soldiers had stopped outside Cyprian's carriage window.