As for women.... That there had been one--one or more--at some time in his life, nobody who knew him doubted; but it was the general opinion at Gaya and thereabouts that he was as little concerned with women as with anything else that habited the planet. Envious subordinates hinted that at one time or other he had run afoul some feminine reef. When these remarks drifted to Trent (and such remarks always do) he only smiled, for he had a generous supply of humor packed away under his impassivity. It was never known that he deliberately avoided women; it appeared that he simply accepted them as a matter of form, inevitable as waves on a sea, and sometimes as disastrous.
Only Richard Manlove, also an army doctor, who shared his bungalow, had penetrated beyond the outer-rampart of his seeming seclusiveness--"Dicky" Manlove whom Trent first saw out in dead Mesopotamia. Their friendship was a popular topic of discussion on warm afternoons when feminine Gaya gathered to perspire under one common punkah. So different, you know.... Young "Dicky"--a delicious boy ... and the major--oh, rather a decent chap, a human manual of Hindustani and all those other perfectly impossible languages, but ... well, it's so disconcerting not to know what a man is thinking, isn't it?
Thus feminine Gaya catalogued him, and thus he appeared--immobile--this late afternoon as he rode out of Meera.
His anger died as he trotted on, and by the time he came within view of his bungalow, built on the flank of one of Gaya's hills, he was watching, in a whimsical, almost detached manner, the fireflies dance and reel in the dusk. When he drew nearer, he saw a figure in a white dress leave his compound, a figure that paused at the diverging roads not far from the bungalow, and, after a slight hesitation, chose the branch in his direction. Instantly he indexed her as a stranger; no female resident would think of using the isolated Meera road after dusk.
She wore a pith helmet with a veil. The veil was lifted, but as he approached, she lowered it--curiously enough, he thought. He was certain she had come from his compound; therefore, when she was within a few yards, he drew rein.
"Your pardon...." as he lifted his helmet. "Do you wish to see me? I'm Major Trent."