ted through fire, as it were, with slow unflinching steps, and
nobody knew how much she was scorched. Having heard her to the end,
Hemanta rose and walked out.

Kusum thought that her husband had gone, never to return to her again.
It did not strike her as strange. She took it as naturally as any other
incident of everyday life-so dry and apathetic had her mind become
during the last few moments. Only the world and love seemed to her as
a void and make-believe from beginning to end. Even the memory of the
protestations of love, which her husband had made to her in days past,
brought to her lips a dry, hard, joyless smile, like a sharp cruel knife
which had cut through her heart. She was thinking, perhaps, that the
love which seemed to fill so much of one's life, which brought in its
train such fondness and depth of feeling, which made even the briefest
separation so exquisitely painful and a moment's union so intensely
sweet, which seemed boundless in its extent and eternal in its
duration, the cessation of which could not be imagined even in births to
come--that this was that love! So feeble was its support! No sooner does
the priesthood touch it than your "eternal" love crumbles into a handful
of dust! Only a short while ago Hemanta had whispered to her: "What a
beautiful night!" The same night was not yet at an end, the same yapiya
was still warbling, the same south breeze still blew into the roam,
making the bed-curtain shiver; the same moonlight lay on the bed next
the open window, sleeping like a beautiful heroine exhausted with
gaiety. All this was unreal! Love was more falsely dissembling than she
herself!

III

The next morning Hemanta, fagged after a sleepless night, and looking
like one distracted, called at the house of Peari Sankar Ghosal. "What
news, my son?" Peari Sankar greeted him.

Hemanta, flaring up like a big fire, said in a trembling voice: "You
have defiled our caste. You have brought destruction upon us. And you
will have to pay for it." He could say no more; he felt choked.

"And you have preserved my caste, presented my ostracism from the
community, and patted me on the back affectionately!" said Peari Sankar
with a slight sarcastic smile.

Hemanta wished that his Brahmin-fury could reduce Peari Sankar to ashes
in a moment, but his rage burnt only himself. Peari Sankar sat before
him unscathed, and in the best of health.

"Did I ever do you any harm?" demanded Hemanta in a broken voice.