Henry sat alone in the garden long after Amala had rushed away, resisting the urge to track her down one more time. He tried and tried to find some plausible reason for his undeniable fascination with this woman. It couldn’t simply be the fact that she was Indian; he’d been living in India for years and he’d had personal interaction with hundreds of Indian people. He couldn’t deny that he’d always felt intrigued with the dark skin and black hair of the Indian women. Their exotic appearance in contrast to English women had fascinated him, but no more or less than the men and children of the Indian race. And his fascination with the people had always been much like his fascination with the culture and the landscape, the colors and smells, the very fact that so many things there had often seemed exactly opposite to so many things in England. He concluded that his intrigue with Amala was not simply the fact that she was Indian or that he was feeling somehow nostalgic for the country he’d just left behind where he’d grown to feel comfortable and at home. No, it was much more than that.

Henry wondered if it was the contrast of seeing an Indian woman in English dress, along with seeing her in the surroundings of a typical English social gathering. Still, that wasn’t the reason either. While her dark skin and eyes and her silky black hair had certainly made her stand out among the crowd, it was Amala herself that made it impossible for Henry to stop thinking about her.

Henry finally returned to the ballroom, debating whether or not to try to find Amala and beg for one more dance before the evening ended. He imagined how she would protest and insist that he was a fool, but the thought only made him smile. She was far from the first person to call him a fool; he’d been a fool for far lesser things.

Henry felt a little skip in his heartbeat when he caught a glimpse of Amala across the room, but disappointment settled in when he realized she was with her family and they were leaving. He sighed and watched her from a distance until she was gone, then he looked around the room and couldn’t think of a single reason why he wanted to stay any longer. On the other hand, he couldn’t think of any reason why he wanted to go home. Certain he would find his friend Chit somewhere playing cards, he sought out the most obvious location, and, sure enough, he found a parlor containing a small gathering of men who obviously preferred a friendly game of poker over dancing or trying to impress the ladies.