He felt strangely lifted up in the familiar scenes of his years
of wanderings. For he was at home again. Alixe Delavigne, however
carefully watched for her eastern adventure, was socially helpless
in a land of strange alien races, of discordant Babel tongues, of
shifting scenes, a land as unreal as the visions of a summer night.

But to Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The
scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when
he first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and
the gloomy grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set
himself one cardinal rule of conduct, to absolutely ignore all the
lighter attractions of native and Eurasian beauty, and to let no
single word fall from his lips respecting the sudden occultation
of Miss Nadine Johnstone--this new planet softly swimming in the
evening skies of Delhi. He felt that he was beginning a new career,
one in which neither greed nor passion must betray him. It was the
"third call" of Fortune, and he had wisely decided upon a golden
silence. "If I had only met the favored Justine, instead of that
withered Aspasia, Euphrosyne, then, the girl's heart might have
been easily made mine," was the unavailing regret of the handsome
Major. "If I could have come out with them," he sighed. He well knew
the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage
where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and
the trembling woman is defenseless against the perfidious darts of
Cupid.

"My time will come," he murmured as the train rushed along through
the incense breathing plantations. A richer nature than foggy
England was spread out before him in treacherous Hindostan with its