A water-carrier with an earthen jar upon his head had appeared at the top of the steps a second before Shere Ali had turned so abruptly away from Linforth.  It was this man whom the three were watching.  Slowly he descended.  The steps were high and worn, smooth and slippery.  He went down with his left hand against the wall, and the lizards basking in the sunlight scuttled into their crevices as he approached.  On his right hand the ground fell in a precipice to the bottom of the gulf.  The three men watched him, and, it seemed to Linforth, with a growing excitement as he neared the turn of the steps.  It was almost as though they waited for him to slip just at that turn, where a slip was most likely to occur.

Linforth laughed at the thought, but the thought suddenly gained strength, nay, conviction in his mind.  For as the water-carrier reached the bend, turned in safety and went down towards the well, there was a simultaneous movement made by the three—­a movement of disappointment.  Shere Ali did more than merely move.  He struck his hand upon the balustrade and spoke impatiently.  But he did not finish the sentence, for one of his companions looked significantly towards Linforth and his Pathan.  Linforth stepped forward again.

“Shere Ali,” he said, “I want to speak to you.  It is important that I should.”

Shere Ali leaned his elbows on the balustrade, and gazing across the foss to the Taragarh Hill, hummed to himself a tune.

“Have you forgotten everything?” Linforth went on.  He found it difficult to say what was in his mind.  He seemed to be speaking to a stranger—­so great a gulf was between them now—­a gulf as wide, as impassable, as this one at his feet between the balcony and the Taragarh Hill.  “Have you forgotten that night when we sat in the doorway of the hut under the Aiguilles d’Arve?  I remember it very clearly.  You said to me, of your own accord, ’We will always be friends.  No man, no woman, shall come between us.  We will work together and we will always be friends.’”

By not so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Shere Ali betray that he heard the words.  Linforth sought to revive that night so vividly that he needs must turn, needs must respond to the call, and needs must renew the pledge.

“We sat for a long while that night, smoking our pipes on the step of the door.  It was a dark night.  We watched a planet throw its light upwards from behind the amphitheatre of hills on the left, and then rise clear to view in a gap.  There was a smell of hay, like an English meadow, from the hut behind us.  You pledged your friendship that night.  It’s not so very long ago—­two years, that’s all.”

He came to a stop with a queer feeling of shame.  He remembered the night himself, and always had remembered it.  But he was not given to sentiment, and here he had been talking sentiment and to no purpose.

Shere Ali spoke again to his courtier, and the courtier stepped forward more bland than ever.