The Pool in the Desert

There were times when we had to go without puddings to pay John’s uniform bills, and always I did the facings myself with a cloth-ball to save getting new ones. I would have pol...

John was recalled, of course, before the end of our furlough, which knocked various things on the head; but that is the sort of thing one learned to take with philosophy in any...

Mrs. Morgan, wife of a judge of the High Court of Bombay, and I sat amidships on the cool side in the Suez Canal. She was outlining ‘Soiled Linen’ in chain-stitch on a green can...

It remained in my mind, that little thing that Dacres had taken the trouble to tell my daughter; I thought about it a good deal. It seemed to me the most serious and convincing...

Four days later we were in Agra. A time there was when the name would have been the key of dreams to me; now it stood for John’s headquarters. I was rejoiced to think I would lo...

We drove together, after dinner, to the Taj. The moonlight lay in an empty splendour over the broad sandy road, with the acacias pricking up on each side of it and the gardens o...

To understand how we prized him, Dora Harris and I, it is necessary to know Simla. I suppose people think of that place, if they ever do think of it, as an agreeable retreat in...

Dora had been out three seasons when these things happened. I remember sharing Edward Harris’s anxiety in no slight degree as to how the situation would resolve itself when she...

A dog of no sort of caste stood in the veranda and barked at me offensively. I picked up a stone, and he vanished like the dog of a dream into the house. It was such a small hou...

The very next morning I met Armour on my way to the office. He was ambling along on the leanest and most ill-groomed of bazaar ponies, and he wore a bowler. In Simla sun hats ar...

The art of the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic, and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a preposterous point of it--years...

I ventured for a few days to keep the light which chance had shed for me upon Armour’s affairs to myself. The whole thing considered in connection with his rare and delicate tal...

‘The fact is,’ I said to Dora as we rode down to the gymkhana, ‘his personality takes possession of one. I constantly go to that little hut of his with intentions, benevolent or...

It was better not to inquire, so I never knew to what extent Kauffer worked upon the vanity of ancient houses the sinful dodge I suggested to him; but I heard before long that t...

I went of course to Calcutta for the four winter months. Harris and I were together at the Club. It was the year, I remember, of the great shindy as to whether foreign consuls s...

Within a fortnight I was surprised and a little irritated to receive from Armour the amount of my loan in full. It was not in accordance with my preconceived idea of him that he...

When it became known that Madeline Anderson had finally decided to go abroad for two years, her little circle in New York naturally talked a good deal, in review, about her curi...

It was Madeline’s fancy to enjoy the contrast between West and East in all its sharpness, so she and Brookes embarked at San Francisco for Yokohama. Their wanderings in Japan we...

The lady guests at Peliti’s--Mrs. Jack Owen and the rest--were giving a tea in the hotel pavilion. They had the band, the wife of the Commander-in-Chief, the governess from Vice...

Madeline did her best to make certain changes delicately, imperceptibly, so that Innes would not, above all things, be perplexed into seeking for their reason. The walks and rid...

‘No,’ said Madeline impatiently, ‘she didn’t mention it. How shall I tell the men to put down the hood, please? A rickshaw is detestable with the hood up--stifling! Thanks. I be...

The veranda of which Miss Anderson’s little sitting-room claimed its section hung over the road, and it seemed to her that she heard the sound of Mrs. Innes’s arrival about ten...

From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson’s waking hours one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That was the determination she had shown in refu...

Horace Innes looked round his wife’s drawing-room as if he were making an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value, which happened, however, to have nothing to d...

She--Violet--had unspeakably vulgarized it, but it must be true--it must be, to some extent, true. She may even have lied about it, but the truth was there, fundamentally, in th...

A week later Colonel Innes had got his leave, and had left Simla for the snow-line by what is facetiously known as ‘the carriage road to Tibet.’ Madeline had done as she was bid...

beginning to sit down rather solidly on his big New Zealander; and I watched the dusk come over from the foothills for a long time thinking more kindly than I had spoken of Robe...