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somehow it doesn’t seem to get any less empty. I didn’t know how much she meant to me. She’d twined herself round my heart.’
    â€˜I suppose she’ll come back if you agree to marry her.’
    â€˜Oh, yes, she told the boy that. Sometimes I ask myself if it’s worth while to sacrifice my happiness for a dream. It is only a dream, isn’t it? It’s funny, one of the things that holds me back is the thought of a muddy lane I know, with great clay banks on both sides of it, and above, beechtrees bending over. It’s got a sort of cold, earthy smell that I can never quite get out of my nostrils. I don’t blame her, you know. I rather admire her. I had no idea she had so much character. Sometimes I’m awfully inclined to give way.’ He hesitated for a little while. ‘I think, perhaps, if I thought she loved me I would. But of course, she doesn’t; they never do, these girls who go and live with white men, I think she liked me, but that’s all. What would you do in my place?’
    â€˜Oh, my dear fellow, how can I tell? Would you ever forget the dream?’
    â€˜Never.’
    At that moment the boy came in to say that my Madrassi servant with the Ford car had just come up. Masterson looked at his watch.
    â€˜You’ll want to be getting off, won’t you? And I must get back to my office. I’m afraid I’ve rather bored you with my domestic affairs.’
    â€˜Not at all,’ I said.
    We shook hands, I put on my topee, and he waved to me as the car drove off.

XI
    I spent a few days at Taunggyi completing my preparations and then early one morning started. It was the end of the rainy season and the sky was overcast, but the clouds were high in the heavens and bright. The country was wide and open, sparsely covered with little trees; but now and then, a giant among them, you came upon a huge banyan with wide-spreading roots. It stood upon the earth, a fit object for worship, with a kind of solemnity, as though it were conscious of victory over the blind force of nature and now like a great power aware of its enemy’s strength, rested in armed peace. At its foot were the offerings that the Shans had placed tothe spirit that dwelt in it. The road wound tortuously up and down gentle declivities and on each side of it, stretching over the upland plains, swayed the elephant grass. Its white fronds waved softly in the balmy air. It was higher than a man and I rode between it like the leader of an army reviewing countless regiments of tall green soldiers.
    I rode at the head of the caravan, and the mules and ponies that carried the loads followed at my heels. But one of the ponies, unused perhaps to a pack, was very wild. It had savage eyes. Every now and then it bolted wildly among the mules, hitting them with its packs; then the leading mule headed it off, rounding it into the long grass at the side of the road, and stopped it. They both stood still for a moment and then the mule led the pony quietly back to its place in the file. It walked along quite contentedly. It had had its scamper and for a little while at all events was prepared to behave reasonably. The idea in the mulish brain of the pack-leader was as clear and distinct as any idea of Descartes. In the train was peace, order and happiness. To walk with your nose at the tail of the mule in front of you and to know that the nose of the mule behind you was at your tail, was virtue. Like some philosophers the mule knew that the only liberty was the power to do right; any other power was only licence. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
    But presently I came face to face with a buffalo standing stock still in the middle of the road. Now I knew that the Shan buffalo had none of that dislike of my colour that makes white men give the Chinese buffalo a wide berth, but I was not certain whether this particular animal had a very exact notion of nationality, and since his horns were