The Vanishing Point. Coningsby Dawson

they are dedicated, their minds and souls are left to stagnate; they are treated like performing animals—fed and drilled and degraded that they may employ their bodies with the utmost grace.

      “This girl, the moment I saw her, impressed me as being the most fascinating human creature I had ever set eyes on. I had pressed in with the crowd from the evil-smelling, moonlit street. The temple was dim with the smoke of swaying censers. Its walls seemed vast with the flash of gold and jewels. At the far end, scarcely discernible, a huge god squatted, gloating and sinister. From somewhere in the shadows, swelling into frenzy, came the pounding of drums and the clash of barbaric music. Across the open pavement, between the god and the spectators, a chain of girls coiled and twisted like a snake.

      “At the time I entered, the dance was nearly ended. It had evidently been going on for a long while. One by one the girls were slipping down exhausted. There they lay disordered, with their hair twined about them and their slim, bronze bodies twitching.

      “But one girl danced on, ever quickening her pace, till she alone remained. She was like a streak of flame, a will-o'-the-wisp, a spring petal blown before the wind: she seemed the symbol of everything that is young and pagan. Her childish face was masked in an unchanging smile. Her lips were parted; her body gleamed golden among the muted lights. She stooped and darted like a lizard across her fallen comrades; with one leap she floated through the air, perched for a moment on the knees of the god, and vanished into his bosom. Instantly the censers were extinguished, and I was carried out into the evil-smelling street by the rush of the perspiring crowd.

      “From that night it was as though I were bewitched. There was never an hour when that drifting blossom of a girl was absent from my mind. I idealized her into a nobility that was more than earthly. I flung aside all sense of caste and race. I forgot that I was a sahib and over thirty, whereas she was a dancing girl and little more than a child. I excused my infatuation on the ground of magnanimity, telling myself that if I could possess her, I could save her from certain degradation. Above all, I wanted to wipe out her houri's smile and to cause the soul to appear in her eyes. Every hour that I could spare, I disguised myself as a native and haunted the temple. At rare intervals I caught glimpses of her. And so six months went by.

      “Gradually my desire strengthened into determination. I was insane with chivalry—utterly quixotic, as quixotic as you are now. I had raised her to such a pinnacle of worship that a liaison was not to be contemplated. What I planned was to carry her off and marry her. When you remember the gulf which the Anglo-Indian places between himself and the races he governs, you can estimate the measure of my madness. Such an act would entail resigning from my regiment and inviting social ostracism on every hand. It meant ruin, but to my impassioned mind no price seemed too high to pay.

      “There was an old priest who, unknown to me, had observed my comings and goings. One evening he addressed me by name. While I was hesitating as to what could be his motive, he volunteered to obtain the girl for me if I would reward him with a sufficient bribe.

      “Three nights later, as I waited, a door in the temple wall opened, and a muffled figure emerged. Without a word, obeying the instructions I had received, I turned away, and she followed. Through the sleeping city we crept, like a pair of shadows.

      “In the European quarter I had secretly rented a bungalow which had long been deserted. It stood in a wilderness of overgrown shrubberies; a high wall went about it. Not until the rusty gate had closed behind us did I dare to acknowledge her presence; then, taking her in my arms, I carried her up the path to the unlighted house. We entered. There were just the two of us; I had not risked engaging servants. In the darkness I set her down and lighted a lamp. As the flame quickened and I knelt beside her, she uncovered her face. So far, I had seen her only distantly. It was the moment for which I had waited. Her face was white.”

      The Major passed his hand across his forehead. His lips tightened. He betrayed every sign of a man doing his best to conceal an overpowering emotion. He leaned back and gazed up at the ceiling, blowing out a cloud of smoke. When he had watched it disperse, he turned to Hindwood with a deprecating smile.

      “I hope I don't bore you. I'll omit the ardors and ecstasies of my love-affair and stick to the bare outline. What I discovered was that she was an Eurasian. She was fourteen years of age—a woman by Indian standards, but still a child by ours. Her eyes were gray, and her complexion was so light that, with any one but an expert, she could have passed for a European. There are millions of darkhaired women with her coloring to be found in any Latin country. Given the proper manners and a European setting, scarcely a soul would have suspected her. Certainly no one would dare to voice his suspicions who met her as my wife.

      “Her history I pieced together from many conversations. Her father had been a tea-planter—an Englishman of good family. Her mother had been a Burmese. They both had died in a cholera epidemic; their half-caste child had been picked up from the highways and placed in the temple.

      “Seeing that I was out to be chivalrous, I made up my mind to do the thing thoroughly. I hurried up a furlough that was due me and, taking her to France, placed her in a convent. My reason for choosing France was that, when she became my wife, there would be fewer chances of discovery if she passed as French instead of English. In the south, especially in Provence, there are many women of her type descended from the Saracens. If you've been to Arles, you must have noticed them. At the end of three years, when she was seventeen, I returned, married her, and took her back to India. If any one detected the deception, no one was bold enough to proclaim it. Every circumstance argued against such a surmise. She had forgotten much of the English she had known, and pretended to speak only French. I had coached her in her part; she acted it to perfection. By no hint or sign did she let the knowledge escape her that she could understand a word of any native dialect. So far as I am aware, she was accepted at her face value, as a young Provençal whom I had courted in her own country.

      “For some time my romantic folly brought us nothing but happiness. We invented a legend to account for her family, which, through continual repetition, we almost came to believe ourselves. No two people were ever more in love. Despite our difference in age and the racial gulf which divided us, no man and woman ever seemed more wisely mated. Apparently whatever shameful knowledge she had acquired in the temple had been blotted out by her superimposed refinement. Even to me she betrayed no hint of grossness; she appeared to be as sweet and innocent as the girl I claimed her to be—the girl I said I had surprised in the passionless tranquility of a French convent.

      “Her devotion to myself was pathetic—it verged on adoration. She was continually contriving new ways of rewarding me for the horrors from which I had saved her. To me the ground she trod was sacred. I delighted in making myself her slave. We competed with each other in generosity. With each of us the other's slightest whim was law. She was unbelievably beautiful, the most mysteriously beautiful woman in India. I was more than twice her years and the envy of every man who saw her. Her beauty seemed only the outshining of her goodness. Save for an accident, I should never have known otherwise.

      “We had been married two years when she bore me a child. Our dread, when we knew that she was to become a mother, was that our offspring might reveal the Asiatic strain. We took every precaution to hide the fact, if this should happen. But even this was spared us. Our boy was blue-eyed and flaxen-haired as any Anglo-Saxon. She worshiped him. He seemed to symbolize Heaven's blessing on the lie we practiced. He was never out of her sight. In her fear lest he might develop some native characteristic, she refused to have an ayah and cared for him entirely. Wherever she went, she kept him with her; he slept in our room at night. So perfectly had she drilled herself that, up to this point, I can not recall an instance in which she had fallen below the level of a well-born white woman. It was the finest instinct in her nature that proved her undoing—her mother-love that trapped her into the self-revelation which produced our tragedy.

      “Our child was a sturdy little fellow of nearly two, just beginning to run about, when suddenly he died. We had a house-party at the time. His mother was playing tennis. While she was playing, he was strangled and thrown down a well by a native servant who believed he had been slighted. My wife, missing the child, went in search of him in panic and caught the native in the act of getting rid of the body. Instantly she reverted