Violet Oliver separated herself from her friends and went forward towards him.  She held out her hand.  Shere Ali hesitated and then took it.  All through the game, pride had been urging him to hold his head high and seek not so much as a single word with her.  But he had been alone for six months in Chiltistan and he was young.

“You might have let me know,” he said, in a troubled voice.

Violet Oliver faltered out some beginnings of an excuse.  She did not want to bring him away from his work in Chiltistan.  But Shere Ali was not listening to the excuses.

“I must see you again,” he said.  “I must.”

“No doubt we shall meet,” replied Violet Oliver.

“To-morrow,” continued Shere Ali.  “To-morrow evening.  You will be going to the Fort.”

There was to be an investiture, and after the investiture a great reception in the Fort on the evening of the next day.  It would be as good a place as any, thought Violet Oliver—­nay, a better place.  There would be crowds of people wandering about the Fort.  Since they must meet, let it be there and soon.

“Very well,” she said.  “To-morrow evening,” and she passed on and rejoined her friends.

CHAPTER XIII

THE INVIDIOUS BAR

Violet Oliver drove back to her camp in the company of her friends and they remarked upon her silence.

“You are tired, Violet?” her hostess asked of her.

“A little, perhaps,” Violet admitted, and, urging fatigue as her excuse, she escaped to her tent.  There she took counsel of her looking-glass.

“I couldn’t possibly have foreseen that he would be here,” she pleaded to her reflection.  “He was to have stayed in Chiltistan.  I asked him and he told me that he meant to stay.  If he had stayed there, he would never have known that I was in India,” and she added and repeated, “It’s really not my fault.”

In a word she was distressed and sincerely distressed.  But it was not upon her own account.  She was not thinking of the awkwardness to her of this unexpected encounter.  But she realised that she had given pain where she had meant not to give pain.  Shere Ali had seen her.  He had been assured that she sought to avoid him.  And this was not the end.  She must go on and give more pain.

Violet Oliver had hoped and believed that her friendship with the young Prince was something which had gone quite out of her life.  She had closed it and put it away, as you put away upon an upper shelf a book which you do not mean to read again.  The last word had been spoken eight months ago in the conservatory of Lady Marfield’s house.  And behold they had met again.  There must be yet another meeting, yet another last interview.  And from that last interview nothing but pain could come to Shere Ali.  Therefore she anticipated it with a great reluctance.  Violet Oliver did not live among illusions.  She was no sentimentalist.