“Just listen to this,” he said, without preamble.  His eyes took on their far-away look; his voice dropped a tone.

“The night is night of mid-May; the breeze is the breeze of the South.

“From my heart comes out and dances the image of my Desire.

“The gleaming vision flits on.

“I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray.

“I seek what I cannot get; I get what I do not seek.”

To that shining fragment of truth and beauty, his audience paid the fitting tribute of silence; and his gaze—­returning to earth—­caught, in Tara’s eyes, a reflection of his exalted mood.  Dyan saw it also; and once more that red-hot wire pierced his heart.

It passed in a second; and Roy was speaking again—­not to Tara, but to her mother.

“Is there any poet, East or West, who can quite so exquisitely capture the essence of a mood, hold it lightly, like a fluttering bird, and as lightly let it go?”

Lady Despard smiled approval at the simile.  “In that one,” she said, “he has captured more than a mood—­the very essence of life.—­Have you met him?”

“Yes, once—­after a lecture.  We had a talk—­I’ll never forget.  There’s wonderful stuff in the new volume.  I know most of it by heart.”

“Spare us, good Lord,” muttered Cuthbert—­neither prejudiced nor perverse, but British to the core.  “If you start again, I’ll retaliate with Job and the Psalms!”

Roy retorted with the stump of an extinct cigarette.  It smote the offender between the eyebrows, leaving a caste-mark of warm ash to attest the accuracy of his aim.

“Bull’s eye!” Tara scored softly; and Roy, turning on his elbow, appealed to Broome.  “Jeffers, please extinguish him!” ("Jeffers” being a corruption of G.F., alias Godfather).

Broome laughed.  “I had a hazy notion he was your show candidate for the Indian Civil!”

“He’s supposed to be.  That’s the scandal of it.  A mighty lot of interest he’s cultivating in the people and the country he aspires to administer.”

“High art and sloppy sentiment are not in the bond,” Cuthbert retorted, with a wink at Dyan Singh.

That roused Lady Despard.  “Insight and sympathy must be in the bond, unless England and India are to drift apart altogether.  The Indian Civilian should be caught early, like the sailor, and trained on the spot.  Exams make character a side issue.  And one might almost say there’s no other issue in the Indian services.”

Cuthbert nodded.  “Glorious farce, isn’t it?  They simply cram us like Christmas turkeys.  Efficiency’s the war-cry, these enlightened days.”

“Too much efficiency,” Dyan struck in, with a kindling eye.  “Already turning our ancient cities into nightmares like Manchester and Birmingham, killing the true sense of beauty, giving us instead the poison of money and luxury worship.  And what result?  Just now, when the West at last begins to notice our genius of colour and design—­even to learn from it—­we find it slipping out of our own fingers.  Nearly all the homes of the English educated are like caricatures of your villas—­the worst kind.  Yet there are still many on both sides who wish to make life—­not so ugly, to escape a little from gross superstition of facts——­”