"Where should I live?" she went on. "In Chiltistan? What life would there
be there for me?"

"No," he replied. "I would not ask it. I never thought of it. In
England. We could live there!" and, ceasing to insist, he began
wistfully to plead. "Oh, if you knew how I have hated these past months.
I used to sit at night, alone, alone, alone, eating my heart for want of
you; for want of everything I care for. I could not sleep. I used to see
the morning break. Perhaps here and there a drum would begin to beat,
the cries of children would rise up from the streets, and I would lie in
my bed with my hands clenched, thinking of the jingle of a hansom cab
along the streets of London, and the gas lamps paling as the grey light
spread. Violet!"

Violet twisted her hands one within the other. This was just what she had
thought to avoid, to shut out from her mind--the knowledge that he had
suffered. But the evidence of his pain was too indisputable. There was no
shutting it out. It sounded loud in his voice, it showed in his looks.
His face had grown white and haggard, the face of a tortured man; his
hands trembled, his eyes were fierce with longing.

"Oh, don't," she cried, and so great was her trouble that for once she
did not choose her words. "You know that it's impossible. We can't alter
these things."

She meant by "these things" the natural law that white shall mate with
white, and brown with brown; and so Shere Ali understood her. He ceased
to plead. There came a dreadful look upon his face.

"Oh, I know," he exclaimed brutally. "You would be marrying a nigger."

"I never said that," Violet interrupted hastily.

"But you meant it," and he began to laugh bitterly and very quietly. To
Violet that laughter was horrible. It frightened her. "Oh, yes, yes," he
said. "When we come over to England we are very fine people. Women
welcome us and are kind, men make us their friends. But out here! We
quickly learn out here that we are the inferior people. Suppose that I
wanted to be a soldier, not an officer of my levies, but a soldier in
your army with a soldier's chances of promotion and high rank! Do you
know what would happen? I might serve for twenty years, and at the end of
it the youngest subaltern out of Sandhurst, with a moustache he can't
feel upon his lip, would in case of war step over my head and command me.
Why, I couldn't win the Victoria Cross, even though I had earned it ten
times over. We are the subject races," a