Achmed Abdullah

“ Preserved Higgins' exposure, had left the room, and when Jane had turned to him with a flat “I don't believe it. The man is innocent!” his heart had given a bound, for he knew from former experiences her sweeping, uncompromising fashion of taking the part of the underdog. Heretofore, the occasion had usually been with some underfed slum child or some underpaid servant, and had been easily and satisfactorily settled with the help of check book and fountain pen. But this time it was a man, a good-looking and youthful male with romantic eyes, who had flashed a romantic Oriental blade. ”

“ Meanwhile, the Kashmere came in sight of Calcutta, and all the world was on deck, exchanging cards and promises to write, which would not be kept, and beginning to reestablish the strict social lines of Anglo-India which divide a deputy assistant commissioner's wife from the wife of a penniless subaltern of native infantry, lines which had been partly forgotten in the humanizing influence of an ocean steamship. ”

“ Our social prejudices may be wretched and mean and narrow, but—there they are! We simply have to live up to them this side of Utopia.”
“That's exactly what Hector says,” she replied through her tears. “He told me that he has no right to speak to me—that ...”
And then her father mumbled something about Hector Wade, after all, not being such a bad fellow, and thought to himself that he would strengthen the younger man's resolution to keep away from Jane by a few, kindly, but decisive words. ”

“ Utterly alone in the throng, with the very stewards knowing and whispering of his disgrace. Hector Wade leaned over the top deck gunwale, looking out to where the sun was rising in the distant east behind lowering cloud banks that were like mountains of gold, glowing lava. ”

“ For, while he believed devoutly in a holy trinity composed of money, respectability, and pedigree, he also believed in fairness: fairness hedged in by certain safety-first, protective, social conventions. ”

“ He would fight Mr. Preserved Higgins to the last trench. Doubtless, his own chance to make enormous investments in Tamerlanistan and to reap correspondingly large profits was gone. But at least he might be able to make success, if not impossible, then harder for the other, and there, in Mr. Warburton's philosophy of life and business—interchangeable terms—was a point gained. ”

“ He preferred to picture Ali as a kindly old man who had taken pity on his unhappiness and had helped him out of the generosity of his heart without any ulterior motive; and so, twenty-four hours before the Kashmere reached Calcutta, he asked the cabin steward to bring pen and ink and paper, and wrote a letter to his impromptu benefactor, winding up with:
“... ”