behold they had met
again. There must be yet another meeting, yet another last interview. And
from that last interview nothing but pain could come to Shere Ali.
Therefore she anticipated it with a great reluctance. Violet Oliver did
not live among illusions. She was no sentimentalist. She never made up
and rehearsed in imagination little scenes of a melting pathos where
eternal adieux were spoken amid tears. She had no appreciation of the
woeful luxury of last interviews. On the contrary, she hated to confront
distress or pain. It was in her character always to take the easier way
when trouble threatened. She would have avoided altogether this meeting
with Shere Ali, had it been possible.

"It's a pity," she said, and that was all. She was reluctant, but she had
no misgiving. Shere Ali was to her still the youth to whom she had said
good-bye in Lady Marfield's conservatory. She had seen him in the flush
of victory after a close-fought game, and thus she had seen him often
enough before. It was not to be wondered at that she noted no difference
at that moment.

But the difference was there for the few who had eyes to see. He had
journeyed up the broken road into Chiltistan. At the Fort of Chakdara, in
the rice fields on the banks of the Swat river, he had taken his luncheon
one day with the English commandant and the English doctor, and there he
had parted with the ways of life which had become to him the only ways.
He had travelled thence for a few hundred yards along a straight strip of
road running over level ground, and so with the levies of Dir to escort
him he swung round to the left. A screen of hillside and grey rock moved
across the face of the country behind him. The last outpost was left
behind. The Fort and the Signal Tower on the pinnacle opposite and the
English flag flying over all were hidden from his sight. Wretched as any
exile from his native land, Shere All went up into the lower passes of
the Himalayas. Days were to pass and still the high snow-peaks which
glittered in the sky, gold in the noonday, silver in the night time,
above the valleys of Chiltistan were to be hidden in the far North. But
already the words began to be spoken and the little incidents to occur
which were to ripen him for his destiny. They were garnered into his
memories as separate and unrelated events. It was not until afterwards
that he came to know how deeply they had left their marks, or that he set
them in an ordered sequen