It struck sharp on her senses; she almost consciously
thanked heaven for such a responsive set of nerves. Always and
everywhere she was intensely conscious of what she saw, and of how she
saw it; and it was characteristic of her that she found in that saffron
February evening, spreading to a purple rim with wandering points of
colour in a soldier's coat or a coachman's turban, an atmosphere and a
_mise en scene_ for her own complication. She could take a tenderly
artistic view of that, more soothing a good deal than any result that
came of examining it in other lights. And she did, aware, with smiling
eyes, of how colourable, how dramatic it was.
Nevertheless, she had hardly closed with it; any material outcome seemed
a great way off, pursuable by conjecture when there was time for that.
For the present, there on the Maidan with the south wind, she took it
with her head thrown up, in her glad, free fashion, as something that
came in the way of life--the delightful way of life--with which it was
absurd to quarrel because of a slight inconvenience or incongruity,
things which helped, after all, to make existence fascinating.
A marigold lay in the path, an orange-coloured scrap with a broken stem,
dropped from some coolie's necklace.
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