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
warring tribes, its dying creeds, its dead languages, its history
sweeping far back into the mists of the unknown. For every problem
of the human mind, every throe of the restless heart of man is worn
old and threadbare in Hindostan, with its very dust compounded of
the wind-blown ashes of dead millions upon millions. Gross vulgar
Gold reigns now as King on the broad savannas where spice plantations
and indigo farms vary the cotton, rice, and sugar fields. Wasted
treasures of dead dynasties gleam out in the ornamentation of the
temples abandoned to the prowling beast of prey.
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