Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/52

THE large empty room in the hotel garden, used occasionally for concerts or dances, looked dim and shady, and as cool as any place could be on that burning afternoon. There was a grand piano at one end, a big punkah which was worked rather intermittently by the bribed but intelligent native outside, a number of dusty wooden forms, and only a narrow gleam of green leaves and white sunshine from the half-open Venetian shutter at one end of the room. One of the white-robed silent-footed natives brought in the tea-tray and placed it on the long table, and Alice made the tea and handed it to Campbell with as calm and domestic a mien as if they had been married ten years, slightly flavoured, however, by the consciousness that not a soul knew where they were—outside the room. They had some fruit, too, mangoustines and bananas, and they talked and laughed and ate together as if it were a child’s tea-party. But Campbell had something on his mind to say.