have got killed myself, and probably have made things all the worse in the end for her.  And yet it’s hard indeed to have to look on at, or listen to, such horrors as these without openly displaying one’s disgust and disapprobation.  Whenever I meet your famous generals, or your judges and your bishops, I burn to tell them how their acts affect me; yet I’m obliged to refrain, because I know my words could do no good and might do harm, for they could only anger them.  My sole hope of doing anything to mitigate the rigour of your cruel customs is to take as little notice of them as possible in any way whenever I find myself in unsympathetic society.”

“Then you don’t think me unsympathetic?” Frida murmured, with a glow of pleasure.

“O Frida,” the young man cried, bending forward and looking at her, “you know very well you’re the only person here I care for in the least or have the slightest sympathy with.”

Frida was pleased he should say so; he was so nice and gentle:  but she felt constrained none the less to protest, for form’s sake at least, against his calling her once more so familiarly by her Christian name.  “Not Frida to you, if you please, Mr. Ingledew,” she said as stiffly as she could manage.  “You know it isn’t right.  Mrs. Monteith, you must call me.”  But she wasn’t as angry, somehow, at the liberty he had taken as she would have been in anybody else’s case; he was so very peculiar.

Bertram Ingledew paused and checked himself.

“You think I do it on purpose,” he said with an apologetic air; “I know you do, of course; but I assure you I don’t.  It’s all pure forgetfulness.  The fact is, nobody can possibly call to mind all the intricacies of your English and European customs at once, unless he’s to the manner born, and carefully brought up to them from his earliest childhood, as all of you yourselves have been.  He may recollect them after an effort when he thinks of them seriously; but he can’t possibly bear them all in mind at once every hour of the day and night by a pure tour de force of mental concentration.  You know it’s the same with your people in other barbarous countries.  Your own travellers say it themselves about the customs of Islam.  They can’t learn them and remember them all at every moment of their lives, as the Mohammedans do; and to make one slip there is instant death to them.”

Frida looked at him earnestly.  “But I hope,” she said with an air of deprecation, pulling a rose to pieces, petal by petal, nervously, as she spoke, “you don’t put us on quite the same level as Mohammedans.  We’re so much more civilised.  So much better in every way.  Do you know, Mr. Ingledew,” and she hesitated for a minute, “I can’t bear to differ from you or blame you in anything, because you always appear to me so wise and good and kind-hearted and reasonable; but it often surprises me, and even hurts me, when you seem to talk of us all as if we were just so many savages.  You’re always speaking about taboo, and castes, and poojah, and fetiches, as if we weren’t civilised people at all, but utter barbarians.  Now, don’t you think—­don’t you admit, yourself, it’s a wee bit unreasonable, or at any rate impolite, of you?”