FLORA Yes—long-sleever. Thank you. It’s a nice Club.

DURANCE Yes, it’s decent enough. There are not so many British here so we tend to mix more.

FLORA With the Indians?

DURANCE No. In India proper, I mean our India, there’d be two or three Clubs. The box-wallahs would have their own and the government people would stick together, you know how it is—and the Army …

FLORA Mr Das called you Captain.

DURANCE Yes, I’m Army. Seconded, of course. There are two of us Juniors—political agents we call ourselves when we’re on tour round the States. Jummapur is not one of your twenty-one-gun salute states, you see—my Chief is in charge of half a dozen native states.

FLORA In charge?

DURANCE Oh yes.

FLORA Is he Army? No—how silly—

DURANCE He’s Indian Civil Service. The heaven-born. A Brahmin.

FLORA Not seriously?

DURANCE Yes, seriously. Oh no, not a Brahmin seriously. But it might come to that with I-zation.

FLORA … ?

DURANCE Indianization. It’s all over, you know. We have Indian officers in the Regiment now. My fellow Junior here is Indian, too, terribly nice chap—he’s ICS, passed the exam, did his year at Cambridge, learned polo and knives-and-forks, and here he is, a pukkah sahib in the Indian Civil Service.

FLORA Is he here?

DURANCE At the Club? No, he can’t come into the Club.

FLORA Oh.

DURANCE Cheers. Your health, Flora. I drink to your health, for which you came. I wish you were staying longer. I mean, only for my sake, Flora.

FLORA Yes, but I’m not. So that’s that. Don’t look hangdog. You might like me less and less as you got to know me.

DURANCE Will you come riding in the morning?

FLORA Seriously.

DURANCE Yes, seriously. Will you?

FLORA In the Daimler?

DURANCE No. Say you will. We’ll have to go inside in a minute if no one comes out.

FLORA Why?

DURANCE There’s nothing to do here except gossip, you see. They’re all agog about you. One of the wives claims … Were you in the papers at home? Some scandal about one of your books, something like that?

FLORA I can see why you’re nervous, being trapped out here with me—let’s go in—

DURANCE No—I’m sorry. Flora … ? Pax? Please.

FLORA All right, Pax.

He kisses her, uninvited, tentatively.

DURANCE Sealed with a kiss.

FLORA No more. I mean it, David. Think of your career.

DURANCE Are you really a scandalous woman?

FLORA I was for a while. I was up in court, you know. Bow Street.

DURANCE (Alarmed) Oh, not really?

FLORA Almost really. I was a witness. The publisher was in the dock, but it was my poems—my first book.

DURANCE Oh, I say.

FLORA The case was dismissed on a technicality, and the policemen were awfully sweet, they got me away through the crowd in a van. My sister was asked to leave school. But that was mostly my own fault—the magistrate asked me why all the poems seemed to be about sex, and I said. ‘Write what you know’—just showing off. I was practically a virgin, but it got me so thoroughly into the newspapers my name rings a bell even with the wife of a bloody jute planter or something in the middle of Rajputana, damn, damn, damn, no, let’s go inside.