Flory did not see Elizabeth again until he went down to the Club after dinner. He had not, as he might have done, sought her out and demanded an explanation. His face unnerved him when he looked at it in the glass. With the birthmark on one side and the graze on the other it was so woebegone, so hideous, that he dared not show himself by daylight. As he entered the Club lounge he put his hand over his birthmark — pretext, a mosquito bite on the forehead. It would have been more than his nerve was equal to, not to cover his birthmark at such a moment. However, Elizabeth was not there.

Instead, he tumbled into an unexpected quarrel. Ellis and Westfield had just got back from the jungle, and they were sitting drinking, in a sour mood. News had come from Rangoon that the editor of the Burmese Patriot had been given only four months’ imprisonment for his libel against Mr Macregor, and Ellis was working himself up into a rage over this light sentence. As soon as Flory came in Ellis began baiting him with remarks about ‘that little nigger Very-slimy’. At the moment the very thought of quarrelling made Flory yawn, but he answered incautiously, and there was an argument. It grew heated, and after Ellis had called Flory a nigger’s Nancy Boy and Flory had replied in kind, Westfield too lost his temper. He was a good-natured man, but Flory’s Bolshie ideas sometimes annoyed him. He could never understand why, when there was so clearly a right and a wrong opinion about everything, Flory always seemed to delight in choosing the wrong one. He told Flory ‘not to start talking like a damned Hyde Park agitator’, and then read him a snappish little sermon, taking as his text the five chief beatitudes of the pukka sahib, namely:

Keeping up our prestige, The firm hand (without the velvet glove), We white men must hang together, Give them an inch and they’ll take an ell, and Esprit de Corps.

All the while his anxiety to see Elizabeth was so gnawing at Flory’s heart that he could hardly hear what was said to him. Besides, he had heard it all so often, so very often — a hundred times, a thousand times it might be, since his first week in Rangoon, when his burra sahib (an old Scotch gin-soaker and great breeder of racing ponies, afterwards warned off the turf for some dirty business of running the same horse under two different names) saw him take off his topi to pass a native funeral and said to him reprovingly: ‘Remember laddie, always remember, we are sahiblog and they are dirrt!’ It sickened him, now, to have to listen to such trash. So he cut Westfield short by saying blasphemously:

‘Oh, shut up! I’m sick of the subject. Veraswami’s a damned good fellow — a damned sight better than some white men I can think of. Anyway, I’m going to propose his name for the Club when the general meeting comes. Perhaps he’ll liven this bloody place up a bit.’

Whereat the row would have become serious if it had not ended as most rows ended at the Club — with the appearance of the butler, who had heard the raised voices.

‘Did master call, sir?’

‘No. Go to hell,’ said Ellis morosely.

The butler retired, but that was the end of the dispute for the time being. At this moment there were footsteps and voices outside; the Lackersteens were arriving at the Club.

When they entered the lounge, Flory could not even nerve himself to look directly at Elizabeth; but he noticed that all three of them were much more smartly dressed than usual. Mr Lackersteen was even wearing a dinner-jacket — white, because of the season — and was completely sober. The boiled shirt and pique waistcoat seemed to hold him upright and stiffen his moral fibre like a breastplate. Mrs Lackersteen looked handsome and serpentine in a red dress. In some indefinable way all three gave the impression that they were waiting to receive some distinguished guest.

When drinks had been called for, and Mrs Lackersteen had usurped the place under the punkah, Flory took a chair on the outside of the group. He dared not accost Elizabeth yet. Mrs Lackersteen had begun talking in an extraordinary, silly manner about the dear Prince of Wales, and putting on an accent like a temporarily promoted chorus-girl playing the part of a duchess in a musical comedy. The others wondered privately what the devil was the matter with her. Flory had stationed himself almost behind Elizabeth. She was wearing a yellow frock, cut very short as the fashion then was, with champagne-coloured stockings and slippers to match, and she carried a big ostrich-feather fan. She looked so modish, so adult, that he feared her more than he had ever done. It was unbelievable that he had ever kissed her. She was talking easily to all the others at once, and now and again he dared to put a word into the general conversation; but she never answered him directly, and whether or not she meant to ignore him, he could not tell.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Lackersteen presently, ‘and who’s for a rubbah?’

She said quite distinctly a ‘rubbah’. Her accent was growing more aristocratic with every word she uttered. It was unaccountable. It appeared that Ellis, Westfield and Mr Lackersteen were for a ‘rubbah’. Flory refused as soon as he saw that Elizabeth was not playing. Now or never was his chance to get her alone. When they all moved for the card-room, he saw with a mixture of fear and relief that Elizabeth came last. He stopped in the doorway, barring her path. He had turned dreadly pale. She shrank from him a little.

‘Excuse me,’ they both said simultaneously.

‘One moment,’ he said, and do what he would his voice trembled. ‘May I speak to you? You don’t mind — there’s something I must say.’

‘Will you please let me pass, Mr Flory?’

‘Please! Please! We’re alone now. You won’t refuse just to let me speak?’

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s only this. Whatever I’ve done to offend you — please tell me what it is. Tell me and let me put it right. I’d sooner cut my hand off than offend you. Just tell me, don’t let me go on not even knowing what it is.’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. “Tell you how you’ve offended me?” Why should you have OFFENDED me?’

‘But I must have! After the way you behaved!’

‘“After the way I behaved?” I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know why you’re talking in this extraordinary way at all.’

‘But you won’t even speak to me! This morning you cut me absolutely dead.’

‘Surely I can do as I like without being questioned?’

‘But please, please! Don’t you see, you must see, what it’s like for me to be snubbed all of a sudden. After all, only last night you — ’

She turned pink. ‘I think it’s absolutely — absolutely caddish of you to mention such things!’

‘I know, I know. I know all that. But what else can I do? You walked past me this morning as though I’d been a stone. I know that I’ve offended you in some way. Can you blame me if I want to know what it is that I’ve done?’

He was, as usual, making it worse with every word he said. He perceived that whatever he had done, to be made to speak of it seemed to her worse than the thing itself. She was not going to explain. She was going to leave him in the dark — snub him and then pretend that nothing had happened; the natural feminine move. Nevertheless he urged her again:

‘Please tell me. I can’t let everything end between us like this.’

‘“End between us”? There was nothing to end,’ she said coldly.

The vulgarity of this remark wounded him, and he said quickly:

‘That wasn’t like you, Elizabeth! It’s not generous to cut a man dead after you’ve been kind to him, and then refuse even to tell him the reason. You might be straightforward with me. Please tell me what it is that I’ve done.’

She gave him an oblique, bitter look, bitter not because of what he had done, but because he had made her speak of it. But perhaps she was anxious to end the scene, and she said:

‘Well then, if you absolutely force me to speak of it — ’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m told that at the very same time as you were pretending to — well, when you were . . . with me — oh, it’s too beastly! I can’t speak of it.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m told th............