spontaneous. Social life in the poor little place is almost a pure
farce with the number of its dictated, prompted intimacies, not
controlled by general laws of expediency as at home, but each on its
own basis of hope and expectancy, broadly and ludicrously obvious as
a case by itself. There is a conspiracy of stupidity about it, for
we are all in the same hat, every one of us; there is none so
exalted that he does not urgently want a post that somebody else can
give him. So we continue to exchange our depreciated smiles, and
only privately admit that the person who most desires to be
agreeable to us is the person whom we regard with the greatest
suspicion. As between Dora Harris and myself there could be,
naturally, no ax to grind. We amused ourselves by looking on
penetratingly but tolerantly at the grinding of other people's.

That was a very principal bond between us, that uncompromising
clearness with which we looked at the place we lived in, and on the
testimony of which we were so certain that we didn't like it. The
women were nearly all so much in heaven in Simla, the men so well
satisfied to be there too, at the top of the tree, that our
dissatisfaction gave us to one another the merit of originality,
almost proved in one another a superior mind. It was not that
either of us would have preferred to grill out our days in the
plains; we always had a saving clause for the climate, the altitude,
the scenery; it was Simla intrinsic, Simla as its other conditions
made it, with which we found such liberal fault. Again I should
have to explain Simla, at the length of an essay at least, to
justify our condemnation. This difficulty confronts me everywhere.
I must ask you instead to imagine a small colony of superior--very
superior--officials, of British origin and traditions, set on the
top of a hill, years and miles away from literature, music,