“Well?”
“Oh, nothing really. I dare say I’m quite wrong. You see, Prang——”
“What?” Amory asked as he paused again.
There was a twinkle in the eyes that rose to Amory’s. Mr. Strong gave a slight shrug.—“Well—Prang!——” he said with humorous deprecation.
Amory was quick.—“Oh!—You don’t mean that Mr. Prang isn’t sound?”
“Sound? Perfectly, perfectly. And a most capable fellow. Only I’ve wondered once or twice whether he isn’t—you know—just a little too capable.... You see, we want to use Prang—not to have Prang using us.”
Amory could not forbear to smile. If that was all that was troubling Mr. Strong she thought she could reassure him.
“I don’t think you’d have been afraid of that if you’d been here last night,” she replied quietly. “We were talking over England’s diabolical misrule, and I never knew Mr. Prang so luminous. It was pathetic—really. Cosimo was talking about that Rawal Pindi case—you know, of that ruffianly young subaltern drawing down the blinds and then beating the native.—‘But how do they take it?’ I asked Mr. Prang, rather scornfully, you know; and really I was sorry for the poor fellow, having to apologize for his country.—‘That’s it,’ he said sadly—it was really sad.—And he told me, frankly, that sometimes the poor natives pretended they were killed, and sometimes they announce that they’re going to die on a certain day, and they really do die—they’re so mystic and sensitive—it was most interesting.... But what I mean is, that a gentle and submissive people like that—Mr. Prang admits that’s their weakness—I mean they couldn’t use us! It’s our degradation that we aren’t gentle and sensitive too. You see what I mean?”
“Oh, quite,” Mr. Strong jerked out. “Quite.”
“And that’s why I call Mr. Prang an idealist. There must be something in the East. At any rate it was splendid moral courage on Prang’s part to say, quite openly, that they couldn’t do anything without the little handful of us here, but must simply go on suffering and dying.”