"Now," she faltered, "I can be happy again. But not to-night."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
While the _Coromandel_ was throbbing out her regulation number of knots
toward Colombo, October was passing over Bengal. It went with lethargy,
the rains were too close on its heels; but at the end of the long hot
days, when the resplendent sun struck down on the glossy trees and the
over-lush Maidan, there often stole through Calcutta a breath of the
coming respite of December. The blue smoke of the people's cooking fires
began to hang again in the streets, the pungent smell of it was pleasant
in the still air. The south wind turned back at the Sunder-bunds;
instead of it, one met around corners a sudden crispness that stayed
just long enough to be recognised and melted damply away. A week might
have two or three of such promises and foretastes.
Hilda Howe, approaching the end of her probation at the Baker
Institution, threw the dormitory window wide to them, went out to seek
them. They brought her a new stirring of vitality, something deep within
her leaped up responding to the voucher the evenings brought that
presently they would bring something new and different. She vibrated to
an irrepressible pulse of accord with that: it made her hand strong and
her brain clear for the unimportant matters that remained within the
scope of the monotonous moment.
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