The dark days of carking cares, of harassing duns, of frequent changes of base, driven onward by the rolling ball of gossip and innuendo.
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.