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She began at once to pick her way through the crowd, and he followed her, with not even rime to<br />
thank the pwe-people for their trouble. The Burmans made way with a sulky air. How like these<br />
English people, to upset everything by sending for the best dancer and then go away almost before she<br />
had started! There was a fearful row as soon as Flory and Elizabeth had gone, the pwe-girl refusing to<br />
go on with her dance and the authence demanding that she should continue. However, peace was<br />
restored when two clowns hurried onto the stage and began letting off crackers and making obscene<br />
jokes.<br />
Flory followed the girl abjectly up the road. She was walking quickly, her head turned away, and<br />
for some moments she would not speak. What a thing to happen, when they had been getting on so<br />
well together! He kept trying to apologise.<br />
‘I’m so sorry! I’d no idea you’d mind–’<br />
‘It’s nothing. What is there to be sorry about? I only said it was time to go back, that’s all.’<br />
‘I ought to have thought. One gets not to notice that kind of thing in this country. These people’s<br />
sense of decency isn’t the same as ours–it’s stricter in some ways–but ——’<br />
‘It’s not that! It’s not that!’ she exclaimed quite angrily.<br />
He saw that he was only making it worse. They walked on in silence, he behind. He was<br />
miserable. What a bloody, fool he had been! And yet all the while he had no inkling of the real reason<br />
why she was angry with him. It was not the pwe-girl’s behaviour, in itself, that had offended her; it<br />
had only brought things to a head. But the whole expedition–the very notion of wanting to rub<br />
shoulders with all those smelly natives–had impressed her badly. She was perfectly certain that that<br />
was not how white men ought to behave. And that extraordinary rambling speech that he had begun,<br />
with all those long words–almost, she thought bitterly, as though he were quoting poetry! It was how<br />
those beastly artists that you met sometimes in Paris used to talk. She had thought him a manly man till<br />
this evening. Then her mind went back to the morning’s adventure, and how he had faced the buffalo<br />
barehanded, and some of her anger evaporated. By the time they reached the Club gate she felt<br />
inclined to forgive him. Flory had by now plucked up courage to speak again. He stopped, and she<br />
stopped too, in a patch where the boughs let through some starlight and he could see her face dimly.<br />
‘I say. I say, I do hope you’re not really angry about this?’<br />
‘No, of course I’m not. I told you I wasn’t.’<br />
‘I oughtn’t to have taken you there. Please forgive me.——Do you know, I don’t think I’d tell the<br />
others where you’ve been. Perhaps it would be better to say you’ve just been out for a stroll, out in<br />
the garden–something like that. They might think it queer, a white girl going to a pwe. I don’t think I’d<br />
tell them.’<br />
‘Oh, of course I won’t!’ she agreed with a warmness that surprised him. After that he knew that he<br />
was forgiven. But what it was that he was forgiven, he had not yet grasped.<br />
They went into me Club separately, by tacit consent. The expedition had been a failure, decidedly.<br />
There was a gala air about the Club lounge tonight. The entire European community were waiting to<br />
greet Elizabeth, and the butler and the six chokras, in their best starched white suits, were drawn up<br />
on either side of the door, smiling and salaaming. When the Europeans had finished their greetings the<br />
buder came forward with a vast garland of flowers that the servants had prepared for the ‘missie-