“Perhaps—­I misjudge them,” he added with the unfailing touch of modesty that was not least among his charms.  “But to me it sometimes seems as if a curtain hung between their eyes and India.  And—­it’s catching.  In some subtle way this little concentrated world, within a world, seems to draw one’s receptiveness away from it all.  Is that very sweeping, sir?”

A smile dawned in Mr Elton’s rather mournful eyes.  “In a sense—­it’s painfully true.  But the fact is—­Anglo-Indian life can’t be fairly judged from the outside.  It has to be lived before its insidiousness can be suspected.”  He moistened his lips and caressed his chin with a large, sensitive hand.  “Happily—­there are a good many exceptions.”

“If I wasn’t talking to one of them, sir—­I wouldn’t have ventured!” said Roy; and the friendly smile deepened.

“All the same,” Elton went on, “there are those who assert that it is half the secret of our success; that India conquered the conquerors, who lived with her and so lost their virility.  Yet in our earlier days, when the personal touch was a reality, we did achieve a better relation all round.  Of course the present state of affairs is the inevitable fruit of our whole system.  By the Anglicising process, we have spread all over India a vast layer of minor officials some six million persons deep!  Consider, my dear young man, the significance of those figures.  We reduce the European staff.  We increase the drudgery of their office work—­and we wonder why the Sahib and the peasant are no longer personal friends——!”

Stirred by his subject, and warmed by Roy’s intelligent interest, the man’s nervous tricks disappeared.  He spoke eagerly, earnestly, as to an equal in experience; a compliment Roy would have been quicker to appreciate had not half his attention been centred on that exasperating pair, who had retired to a cushioned alcove and looked like remaining there for good.

What the devil had the girl invited him for?  If she wished to disillusion him, she was succeeding to admiration.  If she fancied he was one of her infernal ninepins, she was very much mistaken.  And all the while he found himself growing steadily more distracted, more insistently conscious of her....

Voices and laughter heralded an influx of bridge players; Mrs Ranyard, with Barnard, Miss Garten, and Dr Wemyss.  A table of three women and one man did not suit the little lady’s taste.

“We’re a very scratch lot.  And we want fresh blood!” she announced carnivorously, as the pair in the alcove rose and came forward.

The two men rose also, but went on with their talk.  They knew it was not their blood Mrs Ranyard was seeking.  Roy kept his back turned and studiously refrained from hoping....

“If you two have quite finished breaking up the Empire...?” said Miss Arden’s voice at his elbow.  She had approached so quietly that he started.  Worse still, he knew she had seen.  “I was terrified of being caught,”—­she turned affectionately to her stepfather—­“so I flung Mr Hayes to the wolves—­and fled.  You’re sanctuary!”