TENWHEN Kitty and I were alone, she asked me to tell her “everything that happened.” I was able to put on a bright face, and in a lively tone tell her nothing. Meanwhile my thoughts were intertangling as in the delirium of fever. I felt dizzy and bitter cold, and lonely beyond any loneliness I had ever known.
The hall to my bedroom seemed endless, and once I had to stop to rest against the wall. I undressed in a daze, and immediately, it seemed, was in the throes of nightmare. Again I was in India—I could speak only Hindustani but all the people spoke English and drowned out everything I said with shouts of laughter—when I tried to catch Shikra, he bit me on the finger; when after a weary search I found Manu, he had grown long golden hair, and he would not let me comb it because I was “pe
