"No more you are!" he said fiercely. "Not what _you_ call moving. But gentle exercise and--and congenial society--and all that! You know the treatment! Besides the Hutton-Wharton-Hood school don't believe in rest. And--and--look here!--I'll put you on the stiffest starch bandage ever made--and--Oh! confound it, man, one must risk something sometimes, you know! Here, orderly; go over to the _sahib's_ washerman and tell him to make me double-extra-white-shirt-front-starch, and if that doesn't counteract the--the indiscretion--why--why--I wash my hands of the whole business!" He was at work undoing the bandages already, and the last part of his remarks came, argumentatively, to himself. "If you really think it might injure me permanently," began Lance, soberly, in some surprise. Dr. Dillon paused, and looked up with a vast resentment. "If you mean your foot, I don't think it will, and that's all I'm responsible for--thank God!" But as, half an hour after this, he came out from saying good-by to Erda Shepherd, he paused as he passed the Pool of Immortality, and looked down into it as if he felt some need of salvation. "'_If I be not damned for this!_'" he quoted softly, shook his head, and went back to his prisoners. So it came to pass that when Erda Shepherd--after laying the wreath she had brought as a sort of crown to Akbar Khân's '_crass_'--went into the garden for a last look at the familiar places, she found Lance Carlyon comfortably settled in one of the balconies overhanging the river. "This is luck!" he cried, forgetting the starched bandage until reminded of it by a sudden twinge of pain. "I thought I was never to see you again, and it seemed a bit rough--on--on us both; considering what a lot we did together, you know. I've been writing you a letter, to say how disappointed I was at not being able to get over and see you all this morning." "That was very kind of you," she said feebly, conscious that the surprise had made her feel a little limp. Though, of course, she regretted nothing; nothing at all! "I've been wanting to know such a lot," he went on. "Of course I heard about the others, but not about you--you needn't go away immediately, need you?" he asked, as he watched her face,--"if--if you could stop a bit, it would be so jolly." The frank wistfulness of his tone was too much for her. "Yes! I can stop," she said quietly; "what is it you want to know?" "Lots of things; but about yourself first of all!" Herself! That would be the hardest task, she felt; and the memory of that senseless flight from her own reflection in the mirror came back to bring a quick flush to her cheek. "Of course, if you'd rather not--" began observant Lance.