“You found life in England so dull?” he asked.

“Well, one felt a stranger,” said Dewes.  “One had lost one’s associations.  I know there are men who throw themselves into public life and the rest of it.  But I couldn’t.  I hadn’t the heart for it even if I had the ability.  There was Lawrence, of course.  He governed India and then he went on the School Board,” and Dewes thumped his fist upon the rail in front of him.  “How he was able to do it beats me altogether.  I read his life with amazement.  He was just as keen about the School Board as he had been about India when he was Viceroy here.  He threw himself into it with just as much vigour.  That beats me.  He was a big man, of course, and I am not.  I suppose that’s the explanation.  Anyway, the School Board was not for me.  I put in my winters for some years at Corfu shooting woodcock.  And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave at my club.  But on the whole it was pretty dull.  Yes,” and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice.  “Yes, on the whole it was pretty dull.  It will be better in Cashmere.”

“It would have been still better if you had never seen India at all,” said Shere Ali.

“No; I don’t say that.  I had my good time in India—­twenty-five years of it, the prime of my life.  No; I have nothing to complain of,” said Dewes.

Here was another difference brought to Shere Ali’s eyes.  He himself was still young; the prime years were before him, not behind.  He looked down, even as Dewes had done, over that wide space gay with colours as a garden of flowers; but in the one man’s eyes there was a light of satisfaction, in the other’s a gleam almost of hatred.

“You are not sorry you came out to India,” he said.  “Well, for my part,” and his voice suddenly shook with passion, “I wish to heaven I had never seen England.”

Dewes turned about, a vacant stare of perplexity upon his face.

“Oh, come, I say!” he protested.

“I mean it!” cried Shere Ali.  “It was the worst thing that could have happened.  I shall know no peace of mind again, no contentment, no happiness, not until I am dead.  I wish I were dead!”

And though he spoke in a low voice, he spoke with so much violence that Colonel Dewes was quite astounded.  He was aware of no similiarity between his own case and that of Shere Ali.  He had long since forgotten the exhortations of Luffe.

“Oh, come now,” he repeated.  “Isn’t that a little ungrateful—­what?”

He could hardly have chosen a word less likely to soothe the exasperated nerves of his companion.  Shere Ali laughed harshly.

“I ought to be grateful?” said he.

“Well,” said Dewes, “you have been to Eton and Oxford, you have seen London.  All that is bound to have broadened your mind.  Don’t you feel that your mind has broadened?”

“Tell me the use of a broad mind in Chiltistan,” said Shere Ali.  And Colonel Dewes, who had last seen the valleys of that remote country more than twenty years before, was baffled by the challenge.