But the interlude of khaki passed, and Bayou Latouche sank back into its stupor. Again in the starry silences Dana listened to the crooning of Creole songs down by the river and dreamed of a world beyond the dawns and dusks. She was alone then; her mother went during the interlude, and Tante Lucie no longer sat in her court and talked of foreign lands. There were no ties; except money, as always. To keep up the house she taught music.
Then, one day, she heard from Alan. Burma, this time. He held a post with the Inspector of Police at Rangoon. He had a bungalow in the cantonment, he said, and any number of servants to wait on her, if she would sell the house at Bayou Latouche and come to him. In a short time he would have a "leave." They could meet in Calcutta and "do" India together.
India--together! Those words opened the dream-portals. After she read the letter she consulted a mirror and told herself that she was twenty-three and already in demand as a chaperone for the younger set. She went into the library and stood before the portraits of her father and her mother. She cried. And then, aware that the shades of the Charteris family had stern gazes fixed upon her, she sent a cablegram to Alan.
Once aboard the great ship, she felt no regrets; to look back upon the great, pillared house was like lifting the lid of a rose-jar: it brought the fragrance of things very old and very faded. When she reached Calcutta, a young captain met her at Chandpal Ghat. He had a note from Alan. It explained that an urgent matter had taken him to Indore; he begged her to forgive him for not meeting her, but assured her she was in good hands. The second day in Calcutta she received a telegram from him.
"Meet me Delhi Friday," it ran. "Take express. Plan trip to Khyber."
To the Khyber!... She left Calcutta that same day, and now, after a long journey through the prickly-hot United Provinces, she was speeding into the North. India, with its contrasts of filth and grandeur, had not tarnished under the touch of reality; the nearest she came to disillusion was in smoky, modern Calcutta. Now Tundla Junction lay behind in a shimmering heat-haze; ahead, beyond the roaring, sweating engine, was Delhi--Delhi, key to perished dynasties.