" And, Alan Hawke,
the innocent Lancelot, had suffered for some recreant's past crime!
Among the visions of the burning Lotos Land, the bright phantasmagoria
of his unstained youth, there came back now to Alan Hawke all the
glories of his first Durbar, the unforgotten day when he had fallen
under the spell of the woman whose fatal touch had withered the
"very rose and expectancy" of his brilliant promise. His mind
strayed backward through all the misty years to that gorgeous
scene of Oriental pomp. He closed his eyes and pictured again the
brilliant pageant.
The huge masses of serried troops, the lines of stately elephants,
the castled background of the temples of Aurungzebe. The blare of
trumpets smote once more upon his ear, and hordes of jewel-decked
Asiatics swept along before the pompous military representatives
of the Empress, who wears the Crown of the Seas.
There was a quickening of "Love's extinguished embers" as he lived
over again the moment, when "side by side, with England's pride,"
he rode with his sword lowered in knightly salute before the clustered
banners of the Imperial military throne. And the hour of his fate
sounded when the eyes of a woman rested upon him in a mute appeal!
Their glances told him all.
For, then and there, the young officer had seen the wonderful
beauty of the woman who had lured him on and then, in after days,
sold his unstained soul to shame! A fair-faced Lilith, her glowing
beauty enshrined in all the borrowed splendor of majesty, a woman
of gleaming golden hair, a later, all too willing, Guenevere! The
soft subtle invitation of her eyes of sapphire blue had called him
to her side, in that unspoken pact which needs no words! He was
her slave from the first moment! With a last pang of his quivering
heart, Hawke recalled the sly skill of the faithless wife who had
drawn the young officer into her net, for the passing amusement
of her idle hours! Too late he knew all the artful craft of his
being bidden to the Grand Ball, of the "veiled interest" which had
"detailed him, for special duty," of the self-protecting maneuvers
which had placed him on the staff of the faded valetudinarian
general who had given his spotless name to the woman whose lava
heart glowed under a snowy bosom.
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