Hilda went on about her business.  As usual, her business was important and imperative; nothing was lightened for her this last day.  She drove about from place to place in the hot, slatternly city, putting more than her usual vigour and directness into all she did.  It seemed to her that the sunlight burning on the tiles, pouring through the crowded streets, had more than ever a vivid note; and so much spoke to her, came to her, from the profuse and ingenuous life which streamed about her, that she leaned a little forward to meet it with happy eyes and tender lips that said, “I know.  I see.”  She was living for the moment which should exhale itself somewhere about midnight, after the lights had gone out on her last appearance, living for it as a Carmelite might live for the climax of her veil and her vows if it were conceivable that beyond the cell and the grating she saw the movement and the colour and the passion of a wider life.  All Hilda’s splendid vitality went into her intention, of which she was altogether mistress, riding it and reining it in a straight course through the encumbered hours.  It keyed her to a finer and more eager susceptibility; and the things she saw stayed with her, passing into a composite day which the years were hardly to dim for her.

She could live like that, for the purposes of a period, wrought up to immense keenness of sense and brilliancy of energy, making steadily for some point of feeling or achievement flashing gloriously on the horizon.  It is already plain, perhaps, that she rejoiced in such strokes, and that life as she found it worth living was marked by a succession of them.

She had kept, even from Lindsay, what she meant to do.  When she stepped from his brougham, flushed after the indubitable triumph of the evening, with her arms full of real bouquets from Chatterjee’s—­no eight-anna bazaar confections edged with silver tinsel—­it occurred to her that this reticence was not altogether fair to so constant a friend.  He was there, keen and eager as ever in all that concerned her, foremost with his congratulations on the smiling fringe of the party assembled to do her honour.  It was a party of some brilliance in its way, though its way was diverse; there was no steady glow.  Fillimore said of the company that it comprised all the talent, and Fillimore, editor of the Indian Sportsman and Racing Gazette, was a judge.  He said it to Hagge, of the Bank of Hindustan, who could hardly have been an owner on three hundred rupees a month without conspicuous ability disconnected with his ledgers; and Hagge looked gratified.  Though so promising, he was young.  Lord Bobby was there from Government House.  Lord Bobby always accompanied the talent, who were very kind to him.  He was talking, when Hilda arrived, to the editor of the Indian Empire, who wanted to find out the date of Her Excellency’s fancy-dress party for children, in order that he might make a leaderette of it; but