She raised her head and smiled a little before reading the rest of the
letter that she held.

"I only pray they won't keep you awake, dear boy," she answered gently.
"They give us very little peace, I'm afraid, just now."

Perhaps she caught some expression in my face, for she added a trifle
more quickly: "That's the worst of the spring--our English spring--it
is so noisy!" Still smiling, she picked up her letter again, while I,
though still listening by the window, heard only the harsh scream and
rattle of the jungle voices, thousands and thousands of miles away
across the world.



VII

IT was some little time after my arrival, as I shall presently relate,
that the experience I call the thrill came to me in England--and,
like all its predecessors, came through Nature. It came, that is,
through the only apparatus I possessed as yet that could respond.

The point, I think, is of special interest; I note it now, on looking
back upon the series as a whole, though at the time I did not note
it.

For, compared with yourself at any rate, the aesthetic side of me is
somewhat raw; of pictures, sculpture, music I am untaught and
ignorant; with other Philistines, I "know what I like," but nothing