of the house, although Sripati believed
that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended
acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present
discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices
became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in the next
room.

The one said: "We're in a nice fix! I tell you, I heard it with my own
ears!" And the other answered angrily: "What do I care about that? I can
see with my own eyes, surely."

At length Jogmaya said: "Very well. Tell me when Kadambini died." She
thought that if she could find a discrepancy between the day of death
and the date of some letter from Kadambini, she could prove that Sripati
erred.

He told her the date of Kadambini's death, and they both saw that it
fell on the very day before she came to their house. Jogmaya's heart
trembled, even Sripati was not unmoved.

Just then the door flew open; a damp wind swept in and blew the lamp
out. The darkness rushed after it, and filled the whole house. Kadambini
stood in the room. It was nearly one o'clock, the rain was pelting
outside.

Kadambini spoke: "Friend, I am your Kadambini, but I am no longer
living. I am dead."

Jogmaya screamed with terror; Sripati could speak.

"But, save in being dead, I have done you no wrong. If I have no place
among the living, I have none among the dead. Oh! whither shall I go?"

Crying as if to wake the sleeping Creator in the dense night of rain,
she asked again: "Oh! whither shall I go?"

So saying Kadambini left her friend fainting in the dark house, and went
out into the world, seeking her own place.

V

It is hard to say how Kadambini reached Ranihat. At first she showed
herself to no one, but spent the whole day in a ruined temple, starving.
When the untimely afternoon of the rains was pitch-black, and people
huddled into their houses for fear of the impending storm, then
Kadambini came forth. Her heart trembled as she reached her
father-in-law's house; and when, drawing a thick veil over her face,
she entered, none of the doorkeepers objected, since they took her for a
servant. And the rain was pouring down, and the wind howled.

The mistress, Saradasankar's wife, was playing cards with her widowed
sister. A servant was in the kitchen, the sick child was sleeping in the
bedroom. Kadambini, escaping every one's notice, entered this room. I do
not know why she had come to her father-in-law's house