she said, settling down comfortably, now that she had got him alone at last. “My dear Aunt Margot,” he replied, “I suppose it does.” “But, my dear Alain,” she said in a kindly but serious tone, leaning forward and tapping him on the knee, “why is it so yellow?” A vision of the Luong river, sliding dark and smooth in the suffocating gloom; the matted forest steaming in the thunderous rain; paddy fields, lichee trees, mushroom hats, flashed across his mind; but he despaired of his ability to describe the causes and the circumstances of his face’s yellowness, and replied vaguely, “It is the climate, you know.” “The climate? Yes; and the food, no doubt. I cannot think that the climate has so much to do with it, or the people here would be blue, if not yellow and black as well. There never was such a disagreeable climate as this, with its unhealthy dryness and clouds of dust, and the dreadful wind that never stops except in midsummer, when you need it.
