And, there is always the girl!
There, I would have to meet Berthe Louison as a determined enemy!"
In recognizing the fact that his employer must make the game at
last, that she must lead out and so uncover herself, he saw his
own masterly position between the two prospective foes.
"I can play them off the one against each other, at the right time,
and, if they fight each other, with the help of Justine Delande,
I may even make a strong running for the girl. I think I now see
a way!" He felt that his wandering days were over. 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.
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