The Pool in the Desert

ch a small house that it wasn't on the municipal map at all: it looked as if someone had built it for amusement with anything that was lying about. Nevertheless, i

itself that the tenant might have cooperated to call it something else. It was disconcerting somehow to find that our dove had perched, even tempo

no mistake. This strikes newcomers sometimes as a little professional, especially when a hand accompanies, pointing; but it is the only possible way where there are no streets and no numbers, but where houses are dropped about a hilltop as if they had fallen from a pepper-pot. In sticking his card out like that

one end of it was partly glazed off, and inside sat a y

t you, Rosario?' and I stood

cials in Simla there is a greater gulf fixed than was ever imagined in parable. Besides, Rosario had a plain strain of what we call 'the country' in h

nd and saw me-tha

Oh,' he said, 'I tho

ps. May I ask whether you were expecting

e may not-I rather thought he would today. It's a pul

h and new canvas that you never by any chance put your nose into in any part of Asia. It carried me back twenty years to old haunts, old friends

If you don't mind I'll

e a chair, anyhow,' he said, and took one himself and sat down o

'if for a minute I si

erstoo

he said, 'I left pretty

that?' I asked, nodding towards a canvas tacked against the w

ay, and the shadow the head-cover

to him, and one day he gave me that. You have an eye,' he

warmth of a

n eye.' The wine, untasted all those years, went to

you know. It's Rosario's. He photograph

e that the sun of that atrocious country had pu

y get a fresh one. Do you g

ave. A kind of paralysis overtakes one

clear eyes as if for the first t

nt country for pa

paid no attention, staring at the groun

old marble tombs-b

omewhere ab

t cools off again down there.' He returned with a smile, and I saw how delicate his face was. The smile turned down with a little gentle mockery in it

e said, looking at me with a

ever been done. We are sur

ean people

Miss Harris, Miss

daug

is is the daughter of Mr. Edward Harris, Secretary of the Government of India in the Legislative Department. She is fond of pictures. We have a

s dilated, an

tation. It all depends on what a fello

insisted, 'nobody

ould read in his face that

and on. To hope that you will stay a long time and do a great deal. It is such an extr

e me feel responsible,' he said, 'I hate that;' and then suddenly he reme

unembarrassed inquiry and experiment which sat so lightly in his unlined face. He came, one realized, out of the fermentation of new conditions; he never could have been the product of our limits and systems and classes in England. His surroundings, his 'things,' as he called them, were as old as the sense of beauty, but he seemed simply to have put them where he could see

good as that out here, so I brought it,' but I had to ex

I made a note of inquiry as to the present direction of trade in woven

e again, mentioning somewhat shyly that I must have the opportunity of adding, at my leisure, to those of his pictures that were already mine by transaction with the secretary of the Art Exhibition. I left him so astonished that this had happened, so plainly pleased, that I was certain he had never sold anything before in his l

Armour, if he were 'possible,' to call upon the Harrises. Oh, well, he was possible enough; I supposed he possessed a coat, though he hadn't been wearing it; and I could arrange it