And so I am going home, home to my own bleak kindly land, “place of all weathers that end in rain.”  I am going home to my own people (I think I see Peter jigging up and down in expectation before my trunks); and I am going to you.  And the queer thing is, I can’t feel glad, I am so home-sick for India.  All my horror of bombs and sudden death has gone, and memory (as someone says) is making magic carpets under my feet, so that I am back again in the white, hot sunlight, under the dusty palm-trees, hearing the creak of the wagons, as the patient oxen toil on the long straight roads, and the songs of the coolies returning home at even, I see the country lying vague in the clammy morning mist, and the great broad Ganges glimmering wanly; and again it is a wonderful clear night of stars.  I know that my own land is the best land, that the fat babu with his carefully oiled and parted hair and his too-apparent sock-suspenders can’t be mentioned in the same breath as the Britisher; that our daffodils and primroses are sweeter far than the heavy-scented blossoms of the East; that the “brain-fever” bird of India is a wretched substitute for the lark and the thrush and others of “God’s jocund little fowls”; that Abana and Pharpar and other rivers of Damascus are better than this Jordan—­all this, I say, I know; but to-night I don’t believe it.

India has thrown golden dust in my eyes, and I am seeing things all wrong.  We have anchored for the night....  I am watching the misty green blur, which is all that is left to me of India, grow more and more indistinct as darkness falls.  Soon it will be night.

G., who has been absolutely silent for more than an hour, sat up suddenly just now, and took my hand.

“Olivia,” she said.  “It’s a nice place, England.”  Her tone was the tone of one seeking reassurance.

“It is,” I said dolefully. “Very.”

“And it really doesn’t rain such a great deal,”

“No.”

“Anyway, it’s home, and India isn’t, though India has been jolly.”  She sighed.

Then, “I shall enjoy a slice of good roast beef,” said G.