Summary

The narrator is taken back to the church, where she finds that the Englishman is still there. They are taken back to the barracks, passing a topiary garden (i.e., bushes carved into recognizable shapes), which strikes the narrator as bizarre and beautiful but which the Englishman does not see. They are allowed to bathe in a muddy well, which the Englishman says is "wonderful” before again falling silent (159).

That night, the narrator says, the Englishman tries to stay silent, acting on “that simple unfounded and useless decency that would kill him soon” (159). She comments that “I’ll never be told whether through all this he was held in check by great discipline, or only paralyzed. Nobody,” she adds, “will ever be able to tell me” (160). Eventually, the Englishman is unable to contain his curiosity and anxiety. He asks her to...