eyes. His friends had flocked in, and he had
already begun to tell again at full length the story of the
Lieutenant-Governor's visit with still further adornments of a most
fantastic kind. The interview was already becoming an epic, both in
quality and in length.

When the other visitors had taken their leave, I made my proposal to the
old man in a humble manner. I told him that, "though I could never for a
moment hope to be worthy of marriage connection with such an illustrious
family, yet... etc. etc."

When I made clear my proposal of marriage, the old man embraced me, and
broke out in a tumult of joy: "I am a poor man, and could never have
expected such great good fortune."

That was the first and last time in his life that Kailas Babu confessed
to being poor. It was also the first and last time in his life that he
forgot, if only for a single moment, the ancestral dignity that belongs
to the Babus of Nayanjore.

LIVING OR DEAD?

I

The widow in the house of Saradasankar, the Ranihat zemindar, had no
kinsmen of her father's family. One after another all had died. Nor
had she in her husband's family any one she could call her own, neither
husband nor son. The child of her brother-in-law Saradasankar was her
darling. Far a long time after his birth, his mother had been very ill,
and the widow, his aunt Kadambini, had fostered him. If a woman fosters
another's child, her love for him is all the stronger because she has
no claim upon him-no claim of kinship, that is, but simply the claim of
love. Love cannot prove its claim by any document which society accepts,
and does not wish to prove it; it merely worships with double passion
its life's uncertain treasure. Thus all the widow's thwarted love went
out to wards this little child. One night in Sraban Kadambini died
suddenly. For some reason her heart stopped beating. Everywhere else the
world held on its course; only in this gentle little breast, suffering
with love, the watch of time stood still for ever.

Lest they should be harassed by the poike, four of the zemindar's
Brahmin servants took away the body, without ceremony, to be burned. The
burning-ground of Ranihat was very far from the village. There was a
hut beside a tank, a huge banian near it, and nothing more. Formerly a
river, now completely dried up, ran through the ground, and part of
the watercourse had been dug out to make a tank for the performance of
funeral rites. The people considered