In the verandah of Narkhanda dak bungalow Roy lay alone, languidly at
ease, assisted by rugs and pillows and a Madeira cane lounge at an
invalid angle; walls and arches splashed with sunshine; and a table
beside him littered with convalescent accessories. There were home
papers; there were books; there was fruit and a syphon, cut lemons and
crushed ice--everything thoughtfulness could suggest set within easy
reach. But the nameless depression of convalescence hung heavy on his
spirit and his limbs.

He was thirsty; he was lonely; he was mentally hungry in a negative kind
of way. Yet it simply did not seem worth the trivial effort of will to
decide whether he wanted to pick up a book or an orange or to press the
syphon handle. So he lay there, inert, impassive, staring across the
valley at the snows--peak beyond soaring peak, ethereal in the level
light.

The beauty of them, the pellucid clearness and stillness of early
evening, stirred no answering echo within him. His brain was travelling
back over a timeless interval; wandering uncertainly among sensations,
apparitions, and dreams, presumably of semi-delirium: for Lance was in
them and his mother and Rose and Dyan, saying and doing impossible
things....

And in clearer intervals, there hovered the bearded face of Azim Khan,
pressing upon his refractory Sahib this infallible medicine, that
'chikken brath' or jelly. And occasionally there was another bearded
face: vaguely familiar, though he could not put a name to it.

Between them the two had brought out a doctor from Simla. He remembered
a sharp altercation over that. He wanted no confounded doctor messing
round. But Azim Khan, for love of his master, had flatly defied orders:
and the forbidden doctor had appeared--involving further exhausting
argument. For on no account would Roy be moved back to Simla. Azim Khan
understood his ways and his needs. He was damned if he would have any
one else near him.

And this time he had prevailed. For the doctor, who happened to be a
wise man, knew when acquiescence was medically sounder than insistence.
There had, however, been a brief intrusion of a strange woman, in cap
and apron, who had made a nuisance of herself over food and washing, and
was infernally in the way. When the fever abated, she melted into the
landscape; and Roy had just enough of his old spirit left in him to
murmur, '_Shahbash!_' in a husky voice: and Azim Khan, inflated with
pride, became more au