Calcutta, the capital, indeed, was superimposed; one felt that
always at this time, when the glow came and stood in the air among the
tamarinds, and there was nothing anywhere but luminous space and
indolent stillness, and the wrangling and winging of crows. What
persisted, then, under the span of the sky was the old India of rich
traditions, and a thinking bullock beneath the yoke, jogging through the
evening to his own place where the blue haze hid the little huts on the
rim of the city, the real India, and the rest was fiction and
fabrication.
The grass was crisp and pleasant. Hilda deliberately sought its solace
for her feet, letting their pressure linger. All day long the sun had
been drawing the sweetness and the life out of it, and now the air had a
sweet, warm, and grateful scent, like that of harvests. The crickets had
been at it since five o'clock, and though the city rose not half a mile
across the grass, it was the crickets she heard and listened to. In
making private statements of things, the crickets offered a chorus of
agreement and they never interrupted. Not that she had much to consider,
poor girl, which lent itself to a difference of opinion.
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