Gentlemen native to Bengal are not usually invited to balls at Government House. It is unnecessary to speak of the ladies: they are non-existent to the social eye, even if it belongs to a Viceroy. The reason is popularly supposed to be the inability of gentlemen native to Bengal to understand the waltz, except by Aryan analysis. It is thought well to circumscribe their opportunities of explaining it thus, and they are asked instead to evening parties which offer nothing more stimulating to the imagination than conversation and champagne—of neither of which they partake. On this occasion however, at the entreaty of the visiting royalty, the rule was relaxed to admit perhaps fifty; and when Lewis Ancram arrived—rather late—the first personality he recognised as in any way significant was that of Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty, who leaned against a pillar, with his hands clasped behind him, raptly contemplating a polka. Mohendra, too, had an appreciation of personalities, and of his respectful duty to them. He bore down in Ancram’s direction unswervingly through the throng, his eye humid with happiness, his hand held out in an impulse of affection. When he thought he had arrived at the Chief Secretary’s elbow he looked about him in some astonishment. A couple of subalterns in red jackets disputed with mock violence over the dance-card of a little girl in white, and a much larger lady was waiting with imposing patience until he should be pleased to get off her train. At the same moment an extremely correct black back glanced through the palms into the verandah. The verandah was very broad and high, and softly lighted in a way that made vague glooms visible and yet gave a gentle radiance to the sweep of pale-tinted drapery that here and there suggested a lady sunk in the depths of a roomy arm-chair, playing with her fan and talking in undertones. It was a place of delicious mystery, in spite of the strains of the orchestra that throbbed out from the ball-room, in spite of the secluded fans opening and closing in some commonplace of Calcutta flirtation. The mystery came in from without, where the stars crowded down thick and luminous behind the palms, and a grey mist hung low in the garden beneath, turning it into a fantasy of shadowed forms and filmy backgrounds and new significances. Out there, in the wide spaces beyond the tall verandah pillars, the spirit of the spring was abroad—the troubled, throbbing, solicitous Indian spring, perfumed and tender. The air was warm and sweet and clinging; it made life a pathetic, enjoyable necessity, and love a luxury of much refinement.