Dora Harris. She, I believe, held no one else upon the same terms of
intimacy, though she found women, of course, with whom she fluttered and
embraced; and while there were, naturally, men with whom I exchanged the
time o'day in terms more or less cordial, I am certain that I kept all
my closest thoughts for her. It is necessary again to know Simla to
understand how our friendship was gilded by the consideration that it
was on both sides perfectly spontaneous. Social life in the poor little
place is almost a pure farce with the number of its dictated, prompted
intimacies, not controlled by general laws of expediency as at home, but
each on its own basis of hope and expectancy, broadly and ludicrously
obvious as a case by itself. There is a conspiracy of stupidity about
it, for we are all in the same hat, every one of us; there is none so
exalted that he does not urgently want a post that somebody else can
give him. So we continue to exchange our depreciated smiles, and only
privately admit that the person who most desires to be agreeable to us
is the person whom we regard with the greatest suspicion. As between
Dora Harris and myself there could be, naturally, no ax to grind. We
amused ourselves by looking on penetratingly but tolerantly at the
grinding of other people's.

That was a very principal bond between us, that uncompromising clearness
with which we looked at the place we lived in, and on the testimony of
which we were so certain that we didn't like it. The women were nearly
all so much in heaven in Simla, the men so well satisfied to be there
too, at the top of the tree, that our dissatisfaction gave us to
one another the merit of originality, almost proved in one another a
superior mind. It was not that either of us would have preferred to
grill out our days in the plains; we always had a saving clause for the
climate, the altitude, the scenery; it was Simla intrinsic, Simla as its
other conditions made it, with which we found such liberal fault. Again
I should have to explain Simla, at the length of an essay at least, to
justify our condemnation. This difficulty confronts me everywhere.
I must ask you instead to imagine a small colony of superior--very
superior--officials, of British origin and traditions, set on the top of
a hill, years and miles away from literature, music, pictures, politics,
existing like a harem on the gossip of the Viceroy's intentions, and
depending for amusement on tennis and bumble-