"Why, then, should I break my word? Have I done it so often?"
Shere Ali did not answer her directly.
"You promised to write to me," he said, and Violet Oliver replied at once:
"Yes. And I did write."
"You wrote twice," he cried bitterly. "Oh, yes, you kept your word. There's a post every day, winter and summer, into Chiltistan. Sometimes an avalanche or a snowstorm delays it; but on most days it comes. If you could only have guessed how eagerly I looked forward to your letters, you would have written, I think, more often. There's a path over a high ridge by which the courier must come. I could see it from the casement of the tower. I used to watch it through a pair of field-glasses, that I might catch the first glimpse of the man as he rose against the sky. Each day I thought 'Perhaps there's a letter in your handwriting.' And you wrote twice, and in neither letter was there a hint that you were coming out to India."
He was speaking in a low, passionate voice. In spite of herself, Violet Oliver was moved. The picture of him watching from his window in the tower for the black speck against the skyline was clear before her mind, and troubled her. Her voice grew gentle.
"I did not write more often on purpose," she said.
"It was on purpose, too, that you left out all mention of your visit to India?"
Violet nodded her head.
"Yes," she said.