There was nothing on which a watchful man could lay a finger.

Yet between one second and the next they were not the same men, and I, who watched Ranjoor Singh's eyes as if he were my opponent in a duel, saw that he was aware of what had happened, although not surprised.

But he made no sign except the shadow of one that I detected, and he did not change his voice--as yet.
"As for me," he said, telling a tale again, "I wrote once on the seashore sand and signed my name beneath.

A day later I came back to look, but neither name nor words remained.

I was what I had been, and stood where the sea had been, but what I had written in sand affected me not, neither the sea nor any man.