I have been hungry, as I suppose others have on like
occasions, but nothing more."
Nevertheless, in spite of his evident reticence, he was obliged to
give way to their entreaties, and, with a certain grim and
uncompromising truthfulness of statement, recounted some episodes
of his journey. It was none the less thrilling that he did it
reluctantly, and in much the same manner as he had answered his
father's questions, and as he had probably responded to the later
cross-examination of Mr. Prince. He did not tell it emotionally,
but rather with the dogged air of one who had been subjected to a
personal grievance for which he neither asked nor expected
sympathy. When he did not raise his eyes to Maruja's, he kept them
fixed on his plate.
"Well," said Prince, when a long-drawn sigh of suspended emotion
among the guests testified to his powers as a caterer to their
amusement, "what do you say to some music with our coffee to follow
the story?"
"It's more like a play," said Amita to Raymond. "What a pity
Captain Carroll, who knows all about Indians, isn't here to have
enjoyed it. But I suppose Maruja, who hasn't lost a word, will
tell it to him."
"I don't think she will," said Raymond, dryly, glancing at Maruja,
who, lost in some intricate pattern of her Chinese plate, was
apparently unconscious that her host was waiting her signal to
withdraw.
At last she raised her head, and said, gently but audibly, to the
waiting Prince,--
"It is positively a newer pattern; the old one had not that
delicate straw line in the arabesque.
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