His sense of humour failed him altogether.  He would have liked furiously to kick and trample upon that glossy emblem of the civilised world; he had much ado to refrain.  The syce carried back the silk hat to Shere Ali’s smart trap, and Shere Ali drove home in his helmet.  Thus he began publicly to renounce the cherished illusion that he was of the white people, and must do as the white people did.

But Colonel Dewes pointed unwittingly the significance of that trivial matter on the same night.  He dined at the house of an old friend, and after the ladies had gone he moved up into the next chair, and so sat beside a weary-looking official from the Punjab named Ralston, who had come down to Calcutta on leave.  Colonel Dewes began to talk of his meeting with Shere Ali that afternoon.  At the mention of Shere Ali’s name the official sat up and asked for more.

“He looked pretty bad,” said Colonel Dewes.  “Jumpy and feverish, and with the air of a man who has been sitting up all night for a week or two.  But this is what interested me most,” and Dewes told how the lad had implored him to bring Linforth out to India.

“Who’s Linforth?” asked the official quickly.  “Not the son of that Linforth who—­”

“Yes, that’s the man,” said the Colonel testily.  “But you interrupt me.  What interested me was this—­when I refused to help, Shere Ali’s face changed in a most extraordinary way.  All the fire went from his eyes, all the agitation from his face.  It was like looking at an open box full of interesting things, and then—­bang! someone slaps down the lid, and you are staring at a flat piece of wood.  It was as if—­as if—­well, I can’t find a better comparison.”

“It was as if a European suddenly changed before your eyes into an Oriental.”

Dewes was not pleased with Ralston’s success in supplying the simile he could not hit upon himself.

“That’s a little fanciful,” he said grudgingly; and then recognised frankly the justness of its application.  “Yet it’s true—­a European changing into an Oriental!  Yes, it just looked like that.”

“It may actually have been that,” said the official quietly.  And he added:  “I met Shere Ali last year at Lahore on his way north to Chiltistan.  I was interested then; I am all the more interested now, for I have just been appointed to Peshawur.”

He spoke in a voice which was grave—­so grave that Colonel Dewes looked quickly towards him.

“Do you think there will be trouble up there in Chiltistan?” he asked.

The Deputy-Commissioner, who was now Chief Commissioner, smiled wearily.

“There is always trouble up there in Chiltistan,” he said.  “That I know.  What I think is this—­Shere Ali should have gone to the Mayo College at Ajmere.  That would have been a compromise which would have satisfied his father and done him no harm.  But since he didn’t—­since he went to Eton, and to Oxford, and ran loose in London for a year or two—­why, I think he is right.”