She was still wearing the crushed and crumpled morning-dress of balzarine that she had put on in her bedroom at the Abuthnots' bungalow in Delhi Cantonment ... how long ago?

a disjointed speech

It had been the deteriorating remains of a defunct gold mine when George Perry stumbled across it on a deadheader back from a freight trip/visit to a girlfriend in McGrath in June about twelve years back.

In a homosexual of this kind—corresponding to the test of eccentric behavior in the drawing-room—one usually finds a preference for trade, i.e., sexually normal males, because, if another homosexual yields to him, he is only one of a class, but if he can believe that an exception is being made in his case, it seems a proof that he is being accepted for himself alone.