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did not think she could be much past twenty. He had not noticed her face yet, except to see that she
wore round tortoise-shell spectacles, and that her hair was as short as his own. He had never seen a
woman with cropped hair before, except in the illustrated papers.
As they emerged on to the maidan he stepped level with her, and she turned to face him. Her face
was oval, with delicate, regular features; not beautiful, perhaps, but it seemed so there, in Burma,
where all Englishwomen are yellow and thin. He turned his head sharply aside, though the birthmark
was away from her. He could not bear her to see his worn face too closely. He seemed to feel the
withered skin round his eyes as though it had been a wound. But he remembered that he had shaved
that morning, and it gave him courage. He said:
‘I say, you must be a bit shaken up after this business. Would you like to come into my place and
rest a few minutes before you go home? It’s rather late to be out of doors without a hat, too.’
‘Oh, thank you, I would,’ the girl said. She could not, he thought, know anything about Indian
notions of propriety. ‘Is this your house here?’
‘Yes. We must go round the front way. I’ll have the servants get a sunshade for you. This sun’s
dangerous for you, with your short hair.’
They walked up the garden path. Flo was frisking round them and trying to draw attention to
herself. She always barked at strange Orientals, but she liked the smell of a European. The sun was
growing stronger. A wave of blackcurrant scent flowed from the petunias beside the path, and one of
the pigeons fluttered to the earth, to spring immediately into the air again as Flo made a grab at it.
Flory and the girl stopped with one consent, to look at the flowers. A pang of unreasonable happiness
had gone through them both.
‘You really mustn’t go out in this sun without a hat on,’ he repeated, and somehow there was an
intimacy in saying it. He could not help referring to her short hair somehow, it seemed to him so
beautiful. To speak of it was like touching it with his hand.
‘Look, your knee’s bleeding,’ the girl said. ‘Did you do that when you were coming to help me?’
There was a slight trickle of blood, which was drying, purple, on his khaki stocking. ‘It’s nothing,’
he said, but neither of them felt at that moment that it was nothing. They began chattering with
extraordinary eagerness about the flowers. The girl ‘adored’ flowers, she said. And Flory led her up
the path, talking garrulously about one plant and another.
‘Look how these phloxes grow. They go on blooming for six months in this country. They can’t get
too much sun. I think those yellow ones must be almost the colour of primroses. I haven’t seen a
primrose for fifteen years, nor a wallflower either. Those zinnias are fine, aren’t they?–like painted
flowers, with those wonderful dead colours. These are African marigolds. They’re coarse things,
weeds almost, but you can’t help liking them, they’re so vivid and strong. Indians have an
extraordinary affection for them; wherever Indians have been you find marigolds growing, even years
afterwards when the jungle has buried every other trace of them. But I wish you’d come into the
veranda and see the orchids. I’ve some I must show that are just like bells of gold–but literally like
gold. And they smell of honey, almost overpoweringly. That’s about the only merit of this beastly
country, it’s good for flowers. I hope you’re fond of gardening? It’s our greatest consolation, in this
country.’