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AMANULLAH

first steps of the drama, a military gymkhana, the
clothes of the Continent. He could boast of this day,
He could sleep contented with his progress.

The car passed on. I recalled the idea that had
already framed itself in my head, and which was high
treason. Nobody else except, perhaps, Sir Francis
Humphrys, silent in the other corner of the hotel lounge,
had imagined it. Yet it persisted the more strongly as
I watched that strange assembly.

The idea was merely that this was the beginning of the
end. That vanity had gone too far. And going at last
to bed, I thought once more of that changeless old
mullah on the mountain-top, cold now and sleeping over
the valley of disturbance.

There had seemed an odd confidence in his face;
almost a look that said that he and his religion could wait
for the downfall of wickedness, vanity, modernity . . .
and civilisation.

" Good night," said Pierri, and took himself off to a
lonely and fretful bed, dreaming of Roman nights under
the same moon.

186