The company was a mixture of all ages and although about a third of them had well proportioned figures the bodies of the majority were far from attractive. But there was nothing to suggest the obscene either in the decor of the temple or the attitudes of the people in it, and Mary decided that the single silver-spangled garments they wore, by softening the lines of thick hips, lean shanks, hanging breasts and pot-bellies, made the ugly ones considerably less repulsive to look at than if they had been morally irreproachable eccentrics standing about quite naked in a nudist camp.

Feeling uncertain what sort of reaction Ratnadatta would expect her to display at the sight of this spectacle, she played for safety by remarking: 'What a huge woman that negress is. I should think she must weigh twenty stone.'

He turned from his grille to nod to her. 'Yes, perhaps. She ees on a visit to London from Hiati. There she ownes factories and a great estate. She ees a Lesbian and her riches enable her to indulge her tastes. At our last meeting I speak with her and she tell me that she keep twenty young girls in a harem for her pleasure.'

Mary suppressed a shudder of disgust and asked: 'Who is the very tall man with the fair wavy hair?'

'That I cannot disclose to you, because he has not spoken to me off himself. It ees our rule never to question one another, or speak off what we may learn by accident. I inform you about the negress only because she make no secret off who she ees or what she does.'

The unseen band was still apparently tuning up, as only a jumble of discordant notes came from it; so Mary remarked: 'The band seems to be taking a long time to get going.'

Ratnadatta turned to her again with a look of surprise. 'It ees not a band. It ees a recording off a piece by a young musician off great promise.'

'Then I don't think much of it,' she declared. 'It has no tune or rhythm. Like so much of this ultra-modern music, it's just a senseless series of discords that I should have thought anyone could throw together.'

'You are wrong,' he told her severely. 'And you must learn to like it. In recent times the arts haf made great strides. Musicians, painters, sculptors, haf broken away from tradition. That ees good; very good. They no longer follow slavishly tastes set by bourgeois society. This shows that they are persons fitting themselves for advancement and acceptance off the hidden truths. To all such, encouragement must be given. The work they do helps much to break down other conventions which strangle happiness off mankind.'