The practical outcome of this knowledge was not tardy.

A new influence came into my life which was to affect it permanently: but not without a struggle.
A series of concerts and lectures had been arranged for the voyage, and the fancy-dress ball was to close the first part of the journey--that is, at Aden.

One night a concert was on in the music saloon.

I had just come from seeing a couple of passengers who had been suffering from the heat, and was debating whether to find Mrs.Falchion, who, I knew, was on the other side of the deck, go in to the concert, or join Colonel Ryder and Clovelly, who had asked me to come to the smoking-room when I could.

I am afraid I was balancing heavily in favour of Mrs.Falchion, when I heard a voice that was new to me, singing a song I had known years before, when life was ardent, and love first came--halcyon days in country lanes, in lilac thickets, of pleasant Hertfordshire, where our footsteps met a small bombardment of bursting seed-pods of the furze, along the green common that sloped to the village.