Violet Oliver stood up and faced him.

“I must be going.  I must find my friends,” she said, and as he took her hand, she added, “I am so very sorry.”

The words, she felt, were utterly inadequate, but no others would come to her lips, and so with a trembling smile she repeated them.  She drew her hand from his clasp and moved a step or two away.  But he followed her, and she stopped and shook her head.

“This is really good-bye,” she said simply and very gravely.

“I want to ask you a question,” he explained.  “Will you answer it?”

“How can I tell you until you ask it?”

He looked at her for a moment as though in doubt whether he should speak or not.  Then he said, “Are you going to marry—­Linforth?”

The blood slowly mounted into her face and flushed her forehead and cheeks.

“He has not even asked me to marry him,” she said, and moved down into the courtyard.

Shere Ali watched her as she went.  That was the last time he should see her, he told himself.  The last time in all his life.  His eyes followed her, noting the grace of her movements, the whiteness of her skin, all her daintiness of dress and person.  A madness kindled in his blood.  He had a wild thought of springing down, of capturing her.  She mounted the steps and disappeared among the throng.

And they wanted him to marry—­to marry one of his own people.  Shere Ali suddenly saw the face of the Deputy Commissioner at Lahore calmly suggesting the arrangement, almost ordering it.  He sat down again upon the couch and once more began to laugh.  But the laughter ceased very quickly, and folding his arms upon the high end of the couch, he bowed his head upon them and was still.

CHAPTER XVI

SHERE ALI MEETS AN OLD FRIEND

The carriage which was to take Violet Oliver and her friends back to their camp had been parked amongst those farthest from the door.  Violet stood for a long while under the awning, waiting while the interminable procession went by.  The generals in their scarlet coats, the ladies in their satin gowns, the great officers of state attended by their escorts, the native princes, mounted into their carriages and were driven away.  The ceremony and the reception which followed it had been markedly successful even in that land of ceremonies and magnificence.  The voices about her told her so as they spoke of this or that splendour and recalled the picturesque figures which had given colour to the scene.  But the laughter, the praise, the very tones of enjoyment had to her a heartless ring.  She watched the pageantry of the great Indian Administration dissolve, and was blind to its glitter and conscious only of its ruthlessness.  For ruthless she found it to-night.  She had been face to face with a victim of the system—­a youth broken by it, needlessly broken, and as helpless to recover from his hurt as a wounded animal.  The harm had been done no doubt with the very best intention, but the harm had been done.  She was conscious of her own share in the blame and she drove miserably home, with the picture of Shere Ali’s face as she had last seen it to bear her company, and with his cry, that he had no place anywhere at all, sounding in her ears.