‘“We”—you mean people generally?’
‘Not at all. I mean Miss Harris, Miss Harris and myself.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘My name is Philips,’ I reminded him pleasantly, remembering that the intelligence of clever people is often limited to a single art. ‘Miss Harris is the daughter of Mr. Edward Harris, Secretary of the Government of India in the Legislative Department. She is fond of pictures. We have a good many tastes in common. We have always suspected that India had never been painted, and when we saw your things at the Town Hall we knew it.’
His queer eyes dilated, and he blushed.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s only one interpretation. It all depends on what a fellow sees. No fellow can see everything.’
‘Till you came,’ I insisted, ‘nobody had seen anything.’
He shook his head, but I could read in his face that this was not news to him.
‘That is mainly what I came up to tell you,’ I continued, ‘to beg that you will go on and on. To hope that you will stay a long time and do a great deal. It is such an extraordinary chance that any one should turn up who can say what the country really means.’
He stuck his hands in his pockets with a restive movement. ‘Oh, don’t make me feel responsible,’ he said, ‘I hate that;’ and then suddenly he remembered his manners. ‘But it’s certainly nice of you to think so,’ he added.