tinued, as she shook her head and went to the piano. The quality,
whatever it was, that the last fortnight had generated in her, leaped
from her fingers; she played with triumph, elation, intention. The notes
seemed an outlet for the sense of beauty and for power to make it. I had
never heard her play like that before.

It occurred to me to ask when she had done, how far, after a fortnight,
she could throw light on Armour's aims and history, where he had come
from, and the great query with which we first received him, what he
could be doing in Simla. I gathered that she had learned practically
nothing, and had hardly concerned herself to learn anything. What
difference did it make? she asked me. Why should we inquire? Why tack
a theory of origin to a phenomenon of joy? Let us say the wind brought
him, and build him a temple. She was very whimsical up to the furthest
stretch of what could possibly be considered tea-time. When I went
away I saw her go again and sit down at the piano. In the veranda I
remembered something, stopped, and went back. I had to go back. 'You did
not tell me,' I said, 'when he was coming again.'

'Oh, tomorrow--tomorrow, of course,' Dora paused to reply.

I resented, as I made my way to the Club, the weight of official duties
that made it so impossible for me to keep at all closely in touch with
this young man.

Chapter 2.V.

The art of the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic,
and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a
preposterous point of it--years in which, as I sadly explained to her,
I might have submitted to the ordeal with much more 'pleasing' results.
She had often insisted before, but I could never see that she made out
a particularly good case for the operation until one afternoon when
she showed me the bold counterfeit presentment of an Assistant
Adjutant-General or some such person, much flattered as to features
but singularly faithful in its reproduction of the straps and buttons
attached. To my post also there belongs a uniform and a cocked hat
sufficiently dramatic, but persons who serve the State primarily with
the intelligence are supposed to have a mind above buttons; and when
I decided that my photograph should compete with the Assistant
Adjutant-General's, I gave him every sartorial advantage. I gathered
that the offer, cabinet size, of this gentleman had been a spontaneous
one; that certainly could not be said of mine