But it was no longer to assure herself that friends of her own race were comfortably near at hand.

Now she was anxious that they should not be near enough to listen and overhear.
"That's impossible!" she answered in a startled voice.
"It's not impossible! It's not!" And the desperation in his voice betrayed him.

In the depths of his heart he knew that, for this woman, at all events, it was impossible.

But he would not listen to that knowledge.
"Other women, here in India, have had the courage." "And what have their lives been afterwards ?" she asked.

She had not herself any very strong feeling on the subject of colour.