“But you meant it,” and he began to laugh bitterly and very quietly.  To Violet that laughter was horrible.  It frightened her.  “Oh, yes, yes,” he said.  “When we come over to England we are very fine people.  Women welcome us and are kind, men make us their friends.  But out here!  We quickly learn out here that we are the inferior people.  Suppose that I wanted to be a soldier, not an officer of my levies, but a soldier in your army with a soldier’s chances of promotion and high rank!  Do you know what would happen?  I might serve for twenty years, and at the end of it the youngest subaltern out of Sandhurst, with a moustache he can’t feel upon his lip, would in case of war step over my head and command me.  Why, I couldn’t win the Victoria Cross, even though I had earned it ten times over.  We are the subject races,” and he turned to her abruptly.  “I am in disfavour to-night.  Do you know why?  Because I am not dressed in a silk jacket; because I am not wearing jewels like a woman, as those Princes are,” and he waved his hand contemptuously towards a group of them.  “They are content,” he cried.  “But I was brought up in England, and I am not.”

He buried his face in his hands and was silent; and as he sat thus, Violet Oliver said to him with a gentle reproach: 

“When we parted in London last year you spoke in a different way—­a better way.  I remember very well what you said.  For I was glad to hear it.  You said:  ’I have not forgotten really that there is much to do in my own country.  I have not forgotten that I can thank all of you here who have shown me so much kindness by more than mere words.  For I can help in Chiltistan—­I can really help.’”

Shere All raised his face from his hands with the air of a man listening to strange and curious words.

“I said that?”

“Yes,” and in her turn Violet Oliver began to plead.  “I wish that to-night you could recapture that fine spirit.  I should be very glad of it.  For I am troubled by your unhappiness.”

But Shere Ali shook his head.

“I have been in Chiltistan since I spoke those words.  And they will not let me help.”

“There’s the road.”

“It must not be continued.”

“There is, at all events, your father,” Violet suggested.  “You can help him.”

And again Shere Ali laughed.  But this time the bitterness had gone from his voice.  He laughed with a sense of humour, almost, it seemed to Violet, with enjoyment.

“My father!” he said.  “I’ll tell you about my father,” and his face cleared for a moment of its distress as he turned towards her.  “He received me in the audience chamber of his palace at Kohara.  I had not seen him for ten years.  How do you think he received me?  He was sitting on a chair of brocade with silver legs in great magnificence, and across his knees he held a loaded rifle at full cock.  It was a Snider, so that I could be quite sure it was cocked.”