"But surely that was unwise?"
Shere Ali shrugged his shoulders.
"What does it matter?" he said. He did not tell her all of that story. There was an episode which had occurred two days later when Shere Ali was stalking an ibex on the hillside. A bullet had whistled close by his ear, and it had been fired from behind him. He was never quite sure whether his father or the Mullah was responsible for that bullet, but he inclined to attribute it to the Mullah.
"Yes, I have the priests against me," he said. "They call me the
Englishman." Then he laughed. "A curious piece of irony, isn't it?"
He stood up suddenly and said: "When I left England I was in doubt. I could not be sure whether my home, my true home, was there or in Chiltistan."
"Yes, I remember," said Violet.
"I am no longer in doubt. It is neither in England nor in Chiltistan. I am a citizen of no country. I have no place anywhere at all."
Violet Oliver stood up and faced him.
"I must be going. I must find my friends," she said, and as he took her hand, she added, "I am so very sorry."
The words, she felt, were utterly inadequate, but no others would come to her lips, and so with a trembling smile she repeated them. She drew her hand from his clasp and moved a step or two away. But he followed her, and she stopped and shook her head.