“There were four girls,” said the youth who had been most indignant.  “Four English girls dancing a pas de quatre on the sand of the circus.  The dance was all right, the dresses were all right.  In an English theatre no one would have had a word to say.  It was the audience that was wrong.  The cheaper parts at the back of the tent were crowded with natives, tier above tier—­and I tell you—­I don’t know much Hindustani, but the things they shouted made my blood boil.  After all, if you are going to be the governing race it’s not a good thing to let your women be insulted, eh?”

Shere Ali laughed quietly.  He could picture to himself the whole scene, the floor of the circus, the tiers of grinning faces rising up against the back walls of the tent.

“Did the girls themselves mind?” asked the other of the youths.

“They didn’t understand.”  And again the angry utterance followed.  “It ought to be stopped!  It ought to be stopped!”

Shere Ali turned suddenly upon the speaker.

“Why?” he asked fiercely, and he thrust a savage face towards him.

The young man was taken by surprise; for a second it warmed Shere Ali to think that he was afraid.  And, indeed, there was very little of the civilised man in Shere Ali’s look at this moment.  His own people were claiming him.  It was one of the keen grim tribesmen of the hills who challenged the young Englishman.  The Englishman, however, was not afraid.  He was merely disconcerted by the unexpected attack.  He recovered his composure the next moment.

“I don’t think that I was speaking to you,” he said quietly, and then turned away.

Shere Ali half rose in his seat.  But he was not yet quite emancipated from the traditions of his upbringing.  To create a disturbance in a public place, to draw all eyes upon himself, to look a fool, eventually to be turned ignominiously into the street—­all this he was within an ace of doing and suffering, but he refrained.  He sat down again quickly, feeling hot and cold with shame, just as he remembered he had been wont to feel when he had committed some gaucherie in his early days in England.

At that moment the light-weight champion from Singapore came out from his dressing-room and entered the ring.  He was of a slighter build than his opponent, but very quick upon his feet.  He was shorter, too.  Colonel Joe introduced the antagonists to the audience, standing before the footlights as he did so.  And it was at once evident who was the favourite.  The shouts were nearly all for the soldier.

The Jew took his seat in a chair down in the corner where Shere Ali was sitting, and Shere Ali leaned over the ropes and whispered to him fiercely,

“Win!  Win!  I’ll double the stake if you do!”

The Jew turned and smiled at the young Prince.

“I’ll do my best.”