'It can't hurt any man to know that he is loved.'
She had said so; but she was wrong. It did hurt confoundedly. So that was what she meant by love, was it?----
If any of the trivial interruptions which Lewis Gordon so much dreaded had come during the following five minutes, they would have found the coveted chair vacant, though the owner's face was buried in his hands among the files of memorandums and reports. Apparently he gained little consolation from them, for when he resumed work he looked about as upset and disordered as a tidy man can do when he is cool and properly clothed. Nor did they gain much from him during the next hour, which ticked away remorselessly from the chronometer by which Lewis loved to map out his day. He thrust them aside at last impatiently, and ordered his pony, thinking that may be when he had been through that visit to the bazaar he might feel less of a fool, and not quite so much depolarised. And yet she had said there was nothing to regret,--that he would not care,--that it would not matter to him if she thought of him or not!
It was a queer world! He set his teeth over it as he rode reluctantly between the shingled arcades of the big bazaar, and then through a narrow paved alley, pitching, as it were, sheer down into the blue mists of the valley below; and so on to the balconied house where, from inquiries at the Kotwâli, he learned that Chândni was lodging. The task before him was a disagreeable one, and he swore inwardly as he thought that but for his abject capitulation Rose would have attempted it herself. Rose! of all people. He began to understand that the feminine world could not be divided into two classes, since there was a third composed of one specimen. As he went on into the house the very cleanliness and order, contrasting so sharply with the dirt of surrounding respectability, struck him offensively on the girl's behalf, the giggling in the lower storey gave him a vicarious shock, and the obsequiousness of his introduction into the higher one, where Chândni sat secluded, actually made his cheek burn.
'It can't hurt any man to know that he is loved.'
He set aside the haunting words angrily, and began his task so soon as the patchwork drapery at the door fell behind him, leaving him face to face with white-robed salaaming grace.