g in Beauty's gardens on the Indus and
Ganges?"

Alan Hawke knew very well at heart what the quickwitted woman would
know. He sketched with grace, the natural features, the climatic
conditions, the bizarre scenery of the million and a half square miles
where the venerable Kaisar-i-Hind rules nearly two hundred millions of
subjugated people. He portrayed all the light splendors of Mohammedan
elegance, the wonders of Delhi and Agra, he sketched the gloomy temple
mysteries of Hinduism, and holy Benares rose up before her eyes beneath
the inspiration of his brilliant fancy.

The ardent woman listened with glowing eyes, as Hawke proudly referred
to the wonderful sweep of the sword of Clive, which conquered an
unrifled treasure vault of ages, annexed a giant Empire, and set with
Golconda's diamonds the scepter of distant England. The year 1756 was
hailed by the renegade as the epoch when England's rule of the
sea became her one vitalizing policy--her first and last national
necessity--for the Empire of the waves followed the pitiful beginning in
Madras.

Temples, groves, and mosques peopled with the alien and warring races
were conjured up, the splendid viceregal circle, the pompous headquarter
military, the fast set, staid luxury-loving civilians, and all the
fierce eddies and undercurrents of the graded social life, in which
the cold English heart learns to burn as madly under "dew of the lawn"
muslin as ever Lesbian coryphe'e or Tzigane pleasure lover.

The burning noons, the sweltering Zones of Death, the cool hills, the
Vanity Fair of Simla, the shaded luxury of bungalow life, and the mad
undercurrent of intrigue, the tragedy element of the Race for Wealth,
the Struggle for Place, and the Chase for Fame. Major Alan Hawke was
gracefully reminiscent, and in describing the social functions, the
habits of those in the swim, the inner core of Indian life under its
canting social and official husk, he brought an amused smile to the
mobile face of his beautiful listener. He did not note the passage of
time. He could now hear the music floating up from the Casino below.
He had answered all her many questions. He described pithily the voyage
out, the social pitfalls, the essence of "good Anglo-Indian form," and
he was astonished at the keenness of the questions with which he was
plied by his employer.

"You have surely traveled in India," he murmured, when his relation
flagged.

"So I have, by proxy, and, in imagination,"