Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/36

 kindness, were all new and very pleasant things. She was playing at being a Malay house-wife with all the elaborate make-believe which is a special faculty of the child mind. She would load her small body with gay clothes, clamp ornaments of gold about her wrists, stick long silver pins in her glossy hair, and strut about, laughing rapturously at this new, fantastic game. But throughout she was only mimicking Malayan ways for her own distraction and amusement; she was not seriously attempting to adapt herself to her husband's conception of femininity. She would often cross-question Kria as to the practices of his womenfolk, and would immediately imitate their shining example with a humorous completeness. This pleased him, for he interpreted all this irresponsible child's play as the pathetic efforts of a woman to fulfil the expectations of the man she loves.

The illusion was short lived. Very soon Pi-Noi, the novelty of her new grandeur wearing thin, began to be irked by the tyranny of Malayan garments. All her life she had gone nude, with limbs fetterless as the wings of a bird. For a space the love of personal adornment, which is implanted in the heart of even the most primitive of feminine creatures, did battle with bodily discomfort; but the hour came when ease defeated vanity. Kria, returning home from a short trip upstream, found his wife, who did not expect him, clothed only in her water-weed girdle, lying prone in the sun-baked dust before their dwelling, crooning a strange ditty to