Anna Lombard | Page 9

had felt thankful for my little store of learning, so now for the first time I recalled with genuine pleasure the general verdict of my friends, (t is, perhaps, rather to the credit of the human being in general that he or she thinks invariably little of any personal gift until the question arises of pleasing some other by it. I looked again at the glass. Yes, the features of that face looking back at me were straight and perfectly regular, the skin pale and clear, the eyes large, and eyebrows and hair as black as an Asiatic's; and I remembered delightedly that fair people always incline naturally to and admire those who are dark, and vice-versd. Nature's craving to return to the type which is neither extreme in all cases has mixed that inviolable instinct with men's and women's desire. Then the next instant that little rush of vain egotism and self-contentment had passed. Though she consented a hundred times I could not take her to that horror of desolation and disease that I was ordered to. It was quite, quite impossible, and I put my head down in my hands, ashamed that for an instant it had seemed so possible.
At the end of an hour and a half I rose, put on my solar topee, and walked out of my compound toward the Lombards' bungalow to make the promised call only now it was a farewell one. When I reached the house, the servants told me the Miss Sahib had had breakfast one hour ago and had gone out, but only into the compound, and if I would wish to wait in the drawing-room they would take my card to her. I gave the man a rupee and told him to go within himself, and that I would seek the Miss Sahib in the compound. With an intelligent smile of perfect comprehension and a salaam of profoundest gratitude the man withdraw into the cool darkness of the hall again, and I redescended into the wilderness of blooming beauty and glaring light of the compound.
I threaded my way quietly through the tangle of blossom-laden and flowering trees, glancing on every side as I parted them, not knowing at what minute I might come upon her. The morning was unusually hot, the sun seemed to have a peculiar intensity and its fiery beams to be distilling the utmost of their perfume from the flowers. As I advanced farther into the compound I became con. scious of a damper, cooler air and of a mossy woodland scent; the gurgle of water reached me, and then at the next step forward I stood motionless and spellbound: the girl herself was before me and unconscious of my presence asleep. In the thick, cool shade thrown by a luxuriant' Jy tangled cluster of bamboo-trees stood a low, broad, stone couch covered with thick, square velvet-and-satin cushions a Turkish divan, in fact in the open; and one prepared, evidently, with skill and care, for all round the stone base was hollowed out a groove filled to the rim with water, thus forming an impassable trench to the innumerable tree ants of enormous size, that were crawling in black ribbons over the mossy ground. And on this couch, fully extended, with arm above her head, lay the girl tranquilly asleep. Noiselessly, hardly breathing, I stepped closer andl looked down upon her. She was wearing a loose garment of white cambric that was unfastened at the neck and showed the whole of the beautiful, solid, white throat at its base, but which, of its own will apparently, closed itself completely over the softly rising and falling bosom; the head was thrown back, and her face, fresh as a flower, was upturned; the cheeks were like the petals of the wild rose, the mouth deep crimson like a pomegranate bud, and hei light hair, ruffled and loosened, fell in glistening waves over the arm beneath, white and bare for the kindly sleeve was loose and wide and had fallen back from it almost to the shoulder. So might have Aurora herself, wearied with tending the flowers, been found sleeping in the Elysian fields. I stood entranced, letting my eyes travel reverently over the sleeping form. The cambric was delicate and transparent almost as a cobweb, but its multitudinous folds veiled all but the beautiful outlines; the hem of the garment seemed lost in the flounces of lace, or perhaps these came from some other under one, and from these issued two bare white insteps, the rest of the feet being cased in little indoor shoes. Beyond those delicate white feet was quite a long space of the divan, covered with a velvet cloth of cashmere work, and o& this, mechanically, I took my seat. I had no thought