ecause of a passion for the rose I am
called Gulab."

"Lovely--the Rose! that's just what you are, Gulab. But the attar is so
costly! Are you a princess in disguise?"

"No, Sahib, but one brought me many bottles of it, the slim, long bottles
like a finger; and a drop of it lasts for a moon."

"Ah, I see," and Barlow smiled; "you have for lover a raja, the one who
brought the attar."

The figure in the cloak shivered again, but the girl said nothing. And
Barlow, rather to hear her voice, for it was sweet like flute music,
chaffed: "What is he like, the one that you love? A swaggering tall
black-whiskered Rajput, no doubt, with a purple vest embroidered in gold,
clanking with _tulwar_, and a voice like a Brahmini bull--full of demand."

The slim arms about his waist tightened a little--that was all.

"Confess, Gulab, it will pass the time; a love story is sweet, and Brahm,
who creates all things, creates flowers beautiful and sweet to stir
love," and he shook the small body reassuringly.

"Sahib, when a girl dances before the great ones to please, it is
permitted that she may play at being a princess to win the favour of a
raja, and sing the love song to the music of the _sitar_ (guitar), but it
is a matter of shame to speak it alone to the Presence."

"Tell me, Gulab," and his strong fingers swept the smooth black hair.

The girl unclasped her arms from about Barlow's waist and led his finger
to a harsh iron bracelet upon her arm.

At the touch of the cold metal, iron emblem of a child marriage, a
shackle never to be removed, he knew that she was a widow, accounted by
Brahminical caste an offence to the gods, an outcast, because if the
husband still lived she would be in a _zenanna_ of gloomy walls, and not
one who danced as she had at Nana Sahib's.

"And the man to whom you were bound by your parents died?" he asked.

"I am a widow, Sahib, as the iron bracelet testifies with cold
bitterness; it is the badge of one who is outcast, of one who has not
become _sati_, has not sat on the wood to find death in its devouring
flame."

Barlow knew all the false logic, the metaphysical Machiavellians, the
Brahmins, advanced to thin out the undesirable females,--women considered
at all times in that land of overpopulation of less value than men,--by
the simple expedient of self-destruction. He knew the Brahmins' thesis
culled from their Word of God, the Vedas or the Puranas, calculated to
make the widow a volunt