Get your stomach straight and the rest follows. And all that’s French for a liver pill. I’ll take sole medical charge of you from this hour; for you’re too interesting a phenomenon to be passed over.’

By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road and the rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging shale cliff. Instinctively I halted too, giving my reason. Heatherlegh rapped out an oath.

‘Now, if you think I’m going to spend a cold night on the hillside for the sake of a stomach-cum-brain-cum-eyeillusion … Lord ha’ mercy! What’s that?’

That was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliffside – pines, undergrowth and all – slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion muttered: ‘Man, if we’d gone forward we should have been ten feet deep in our graves by now! “There are more things in heaven and earth” … Come home, Pansay, and thank God. I want a drink badly.’

We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr Heatherlegh’s house shortly after midnight.

His attempts towards my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I bless the good fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla’s best and kindest doctor.Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh’s ‘spectral illusion’ theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from horse kept me indoors for a few days; and that I should be recovered before she had time to regret my absence.

Heatherlegh’s treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver-pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn – for, as he sagely observed: ‘A man with a sprained ankle doesn’t walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be wondering if she saw you.’

At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. Here is his parting benediction: ‘Man, I certify to your mental cure, and that’s as much as to say I’ve cured most of your bodily ailments. Now, get your traps out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to Miss Kitty.’

I was endeavouring to express my thanks for his kindness. He cut me short:

‘Don’t think I did this because I like you. I gather that you’ve behaved like a blackguard all through. But, all the same you’re a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard. Now, go out and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I’ll give you a lakh for each time you see it.’

Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings’ drawing-room with Kitty drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the foreknowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous presence. Strong in the sense of my newfound security, I proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.

Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal spirits as I did on the afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented me on it in her delightfully frank and outspoken manner. We left the Mannerings’ house together,laughing and talking, and cantered along the Chota Simla road as of old.

I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my assurance doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all too slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my boisterousness. ‘Why Jack!’ she cried at last, ‘you are behaving like a child! What are you doing?’

We were just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the loop at my riding-whip.

‘Doing,’ I answered, ‘nothing, dear. That’s just it. If you’d been doing nothing for a week except lie up, you’d be as riotous as I.

‘Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth,

Joyful to feel yourself alive;

Lord over nature, Lord of the visible Earth,

Lord of the senses five.’

My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner above the Convent; and a few yards further on could see across to Sanjowlie. In the centre of the level road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-panelled rickshaw and Mrs Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I believe, must have said something.