them. And at midnight, when the south wind was cool and strong from
the river, Strobo and Armour would walk up Chowringhee Road and look
at the red brick School of Art from the outside in the light of the
street lamps, as a preliminary to our friend's final acceptance of
the task of superintending it from within.

We in Simla, of course, knew nothing of all this at the time; the
details leaked out later when Strobo came up again. I began to feel
some joyful anxiety when in a letter dated a week after Armour's
arrival in Calcutta, the Director of Public Instruction wrote to
inquire whether he had yet left Simla; but the sweet blow did not
fall with any precision or certainty until the newspaper arrived
containing his name immediately under that of Herr Vanrig and Mme.
Dansky in the list of passengers who had sailed per S.S. Dupleix on
the fifteenth of June for Colombo. There it was, 'I. Armour,' as
significant as ever to two persons intimately concerned with it, but
no longer a wrapping of mystery, rather a radiating centre of light.
Its power of illumination was such that it tried my eyes. I closed
them to recall the outlines of the School of Art--it had been built
in a fit of economy--and the headings of the last Director's report,
which I had kindly sent after Armour to Calcutta. Perhaps that had
been the last straw.

The real meaning of the task of implanting Western ideals in the
Eastern mind rose before me when I thought of Armour's doing it--how
they would dwindle in the process, and how he must go on handling
them and looking at them withered and shrunken for twenty-odd years.
I understood--there was enough left in me to understand--Armour's
terrified escape. I was happy in the thought of him, sailing down
the Bay. The possibilities of marriage, social position, assured