id not give Ahmed Ismail leave to rise from the ground.
He sated his eyes and his vanity with the spectacle of the man's
abasement. Even his troubled heart ached with a duller pain.

"I have been a fool," he murmured, "I have wasted my years. I have
tortured myself for nothing. Yes, I have been a fool."

A wave of anger swept over him, drowning his pride--anger against
himself. He thought of the white people with whom he had lived.

"I sought for a recognition of my equality with them," he went on. "I
sought it from their men and from their women. I hungered for it like a
dog for a bone. They would not give it--neither their men, nor their
women. And all the while here were my own people willing at a sign to
offer me their homage."

He spoke in Pushtu, and Ahmed Ismail drank in every word.

"They wanted a leader, Huzoor," he said.

"I turned away from them like a fool," replied Shere Ali, "while I sought
favours from the white women like a slave."

"Your Highness shall take as a right what you sought for as a favour."

"As a right?" cried Shere Ali, his heart leaping to the incense of Ahmed
Ismail's flattery. "What right?" he asked, suddenly bending his eyes upon
his companion.

"The right of a conqueror," cried Ahmed Ismail, and he bowed himself
again at his Prince's feet. He had spoken Shere Ali's wild and secret
thought. But whereas Shere Ali had only whispered it to himself, Ahmed
Ismail spoke it aloud, boldly and with a challenge in his voice, like one
ready to make good his words. An interval of silence followed, a fateful
interval as both men knew. Not a sound from without penetrated into that
little shuttered room, but to Shere Ali it seemed that the air throbbed
and was heavy with unknown things to come. Memories and fancies whirled
in his disordered brain without relation to each other or consequence in
his thoughts. Now it was the two Englishmen seated side by side behind
the ropes and quietly talking of what was "not good for us," as though
they had the whole of India, and the hill-districts, besides, in their
pockets. He saw their faces, and, quietly though he stood and impassive
as he looked, he was possessed with a longing to behold them within
reach, so that he might strike them and disfigure them for ever. Now it
was Violet Oliver as she descended the steps into the great courtyard of
the Fort, dainty and provoking from the arched slipper upon her foot to
the soft perfection of her hair. He saw