"After the campaign was over in Chiltistan I was sent after him."
"Yes. I heard that before I left India," she replied.
"I hunted him," and it seemed to Linforth that she flinched. "There's no other word, I am afraid. I hunted him—for months, from the borders of Tibet to the borders of Russia. In the end I caught him."
"I heard that, too," she said.
"I came up with him one morning, in a desert of stones. He was with three of his followers. The only three who had been loyal to him. They had camped as best they could under the shelter of a boulder. It was very cold. They had no coverings and little food. The place was as desolate as you could imagine—a wilderness of boulders and stones stretching away to the round of the sky, level as the palm of your hand, with a ragged tree growing up here and there. If we had not come up with them that day I think they would have died."
He spoke with his eyes upon Violet, ready to modify his words at the first evidence of pain. She gave that evidence as he ended. She drew her cloak closer about her and shivered.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"To me? Nothing. We spoke only formally. All the way back to India we behaved as strangers. It was easier for both of us. I brought him down through Chiltistan and Kohara into India. I brought him down—along the Road which at Eton we had planned to carry on together. Down that road we came together—I the captor, he the prisoner."
Again Violet flinched.
"And where is he now?" she asked in a low voice.