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of her? He disengaged himself and pressed her shoulders gently against the tree, looking down at her
face, which he could see very clearly though the moon was behind her.
‘It’s useless trying to tell you what you mean to me,’ he said. ‘“What you mean to me”! These
blunted phrases! You don’t know, you can’t know, how much I love you. But I’ve got to try and tell
you. There’s so much I must tell you. Had we better go back to the Club? They may come looking for
us. We can talk on the veranda.’
‘Is my hair very untidy?’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘But has it got untidy? Smooth it for me, would you, please?’
She bent her head towards him, and he smoothed the short, cool locks with his hand. The way she
bent her head to him gave him a curious feeling of intimacy, far more intimate than the kiss, as though
he had already been her husband. Ah, he must have her, that was certain! Only by marrying her could
his life be salvaged. In a moment he would ask her. They walked slowly through the croton bushes
and back to the Club, his arm still round her shoulder.
‘We can talk on the veranda,’ he repeated. ‘Somehow, we’ve never really talked, you and I. My
God, how I’ve longed all these years for somebody to talk to! How I could talk to you, interminably,
interminably! That sounds boring. I’m afraid it will be boring. I must ask you to put up with it for a
little while.’
She made a sound of remonstrance at the word ‘boring’.
‘No, it is boring, I know that. We Anglo-Indians are always looked on as bores. And we are bores.
But we can’t help it. You see, there’s–how shall I say?–a demon inside us driving us to talk. We walk
about under a load of memories which we long to share and somehow never can. It’s the price we pay
for coming to this country.’
They were fairly safe from interruption on the side veranda, for there was no door opening directly
upon it. Elizabeth had sat down with her arms on the little wicker table, but Flory remained strolling
back and forth, with his hands in his coat pockets, stepping into the moonlight that streamed beneath
the eastern eaves of the veranda, and back into the shadows.
‘I said just now that I loved you. Love! The word’s been used till it’s meaningless. But let me try to
explain. This afternoon when you were there shooting with me, I thought, my God! here at last is
somebody who can share my life with me, but really share it, really live it with me–do you see–’
He was going to ask her to marry him–indeed, he had intended to ask her without more delay. But
the words were not spoken yet; instead, he found himself talking egoistically on and on. He could not
help it. It was so important that she should understand something of what his life in this country had
been; that she should grasp the nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to nullify. And it was so
devilishly difficult to explain. It is devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are
they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in
love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings
with sympathy. But who that has not suffered it understands the pain of exile? Elizabeth watched him
as he moved to and fro, in and out of the pool of moonlight that turned his silk coat to silver. Her heart
was still knocking from the kiss, and yet her thoughts wandered as he talked. Was he going to ask her