In Rudyard Kippling's "The Man Who Would be King" (page 1011), explain the significance of the final exchange between the narrator and the Superintendent.

There is a great deal of acting, or role-playing, in this story. The unnamed narrator first meets Peachey Carnehan on a train, and Carnehan admits to pretending to be a journalist quite often. The narrator says that Carnehan:

told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food.

The narrator is actually a journalist, one who tells other people's stories, while Carnehan is the kind of man who is actually in the thick of the action: who makes the stories happen himself. In doing a favor for Carnehan, the narrator meets Daniel Dravot, and both men strike the narrator as somewhat "larger-than-life." When they are eventually in a room together with the narrator, Carnehan's giant shoulders seem to take up one half of the room while Dravot's huge red beard seems to take up the other half.
When the narrator meets them again, they are planning to travel to Kafiristan, pretending to be mad priests (more role-playing) in order to survive the passage through Afghanistan and then become kings. Their disguise actually works, and they survive their travels, despite the narrator's doubts and warnings. Their adventure is, in many ways, successful. They do, in fact, become kings, and Dravot is even thought of as a god until he is revealed to bleed.
Years pass for the narrator, and he continues his journalist job, writing obituaries for European monarchs and so on. When Carnehan returns, the narrator does not even recognize him. Carnehan tells his story—even talking about himself in the third person—as a sort of dramatic and fantastic adventure tale. He may be a frail wreck of a man now, but the people he had helped to rule did release him as miraculous when he survived crucifixion.
The point of rehashing all of this is to prove that Carnehan and Dravot lived their story; they had wild adventures. Yes, they endure pain and tragedy, but they also experienced life to its fullest and had unique experiences. The fact that they have names and the narrator and the superintendent of the asylum do not have names seems significant.
In the end, Carnehan dies in the asylum, without the shriveled head and golden crown of Dravot, creating one final mystery and potential story. What could possibly have happened to the bag with the head and the crown with which Carnehan swore he'd never part? The journalist and superintendent seem boring by comparison. Thus, that final interaction lets us know that there is, ultimately, more to Carnehan's story: even in death, he creates adventure. It also shows the blandness of the lives of those who fail to create their own stories and merely witness the stories created by others.