The maid saw the table and the sealed parcel upon it.  Then she saw Mrs. Oliver come to the table, break the seals, open the parcel, take out a jewel case—­a jewel case which the maid knew well—­and carry it and the parcel out of sight.  Mrs. Oliver crossed to a corner of the room where her trunks lay; and the next moment the maid heard a key grate in a lock.  For a little while the candle still burned, and every now and then a distorted shadow was flung upon the wall of the tent within the maid’s vision.  It seemed to her that Mrs. Oliver was sitting at a little writing table which stood close by the trunk.  Then the light went out again.  The maid would have thought no more of this incident, but on entering the room next morning with a cup of tea, she was surprised to see the packet once more sealed and fastened on the centre table.

“Adela,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I want you to take that parcel to the Post Office yourself and send it off.”

The maid took the parcel away.

Violet Oliver, with a sigh of relief, drank her tea.  At last, she thought, the end was reached.  Now, indeed, her life and Shere Ali’s life would touch no more.  But she was to see him again.  For two days later, as the train which was carrying her northwards to Lahore moved out of the station, she saw from the window of her carriage the young Prince of Chiltistan standing upon the platform.  She drew back quickly, fearing that he would see her.  But he was watching the train with indifferent eyes; and the spectacle of his indifference struck her as something incongruous and strange.  She had been thinking of him with remorse as a man twisting like Hamlet in the coils of tragedy, and wearing like Hamlet the tragic mien.  Yet here he was on the platform of a railway station, waiting, like any commonplace traveller, with an uninterested patience for his train.  The aspect of Shere Ali diminished Violet Oliver’s remorse.  She wondered for a moment why he was not travelling upon the same train as herself, for his destination must be northwards too.  And then she lost sight of him.  She was glad that after all the last vision of him which she was to carry away was not the vision of a youth helpless and despairing with a trouble-tortured face.

Shere Ali was following out the destiny to which his character bound him.  He had been made and moulded and fashioned, and though he knew he had been fashioned awry, he could no more change and rebuild himself than the hunchback can will away his hump.  He was driven down the ways of circumstance.  At present he saw and knew that he was so driven.  He knew, too, that he could not resist.  This half-year in Chiltistan had taught him that.

So he went southwards to Calcutta.  The mere thought of Chiltistan was unendurable.  He had to forget.  There was no possibility of forgetfulness amongst his own hills and the foreign race that once had been his own people.  Southwards he went to Calcutta, and in that city for a time was lost to sight.  He emerged one afternoon upon the racecourse, and while standing on the grass in front of the Club stand, before the horses cantered down to the starting post, he saw an elderly man, heavy of build but still erect, approach him with a smile.