“But, Pidge, I do understand.”
“How can you?”
“Because I have loved like that, because I have had experience. I loved an English boy in the same way—oh, long ago. I love him still, but I could not stay with him, because he—why, Pidge, it is just the same. He needs to cry for some one, for something, otherwise he remains asleep in life.”
“You’re saying this to help me.”
“What I’ve lived through should help you. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever known—that I couldn’t forget everything and have him, just two alone in the world. But when I went to him, he was satisfied and looked elsewhere. I almost died of revolt.”
Pidge’s eyes were very wide. “And when you didn’t go to him?” she said in slow tones. “What happened then?”
“It was then that he remembered and reminded me that I was half-caste. Also he looked elsewhere, just the same.”
“And you still love him?”
“Deep underneath—that is not changed.”
“But what is Nagar?”