In the high waste places of the world Clyde roamed and hunted and
dreamed, death-dealing and gracious as some god of Hellas, moving
with his horses and servants and four-footed camp followers from one
dwelling ground to another, a welcome guest among wild primitive
village folk and nomads, a friend and slayer of the fleet, shy
beasts around him. By the shores of misty upland lakes he shot the
wild fowl that had winged their way to him across half the old
world; beyond Bokhara he watched the wild Aryan horsemen at their
gambols; watched, too, in some dim-lit tea-house one of those
beautiful uncouth dances that one can never wholly forget; or,
making a wide cast down to the valley of the Tigris, swam and rolled
in its snow-cooled racing waters. Vanessa, meanwhile, in a
Bayswater back street, was making out the weekly laundry list,
attending bargain sales, and, in her more adventurous moments,
trying new ways of cooking whiting. Occasionally she went to bridge
parties, where, if the play was not illuminating, at least one
learned a great deal about the private life of some of the Royal and
Imperial Houses. Vanessa, in a way, was glad that Clyde had done
the proper thing. She had a strong natural bias towards
respectability, though she would have preferred to have been
respectable in smarter surroundings, where her example would have
done more good. To be beyond reproach was one thing, but it would
have been nicer to have been nearer to the Park.
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