leapt from his chair saying: "Hang it all, I'll burn the letter!" and went over to the lamp. But instead of burning it he read it over once more.
The ashes that the servant swept off the table the next morning were not those of Asha's letter, but of his numerous abortive attempts at writing a reply.
Another letter duly arrived:
So you have not replied to my letter! It is as well. The truth cannot always be told—but my heart understands you. When the devotee offers worship the reply comes not in words. Has my offering at least found a place at your feet?
Mahendra again made an attempt to reply. But he had not the skill to appear to be writing to Asha, the reply to Binodini would obtrude itself. He spent the greater part of the night in writing, and in tearing up what he had written; and when at last he did manage to finish a letter and put it into an envelope, something seemed to cut him like the lash of a whip when he had to write on it Asha's name. "You scoundrel!" some one seemed to say, "would you betray that trusting girl!" He tore it into a hundred bits and spent the rest of the night with his face in his hands as if trying to hide from himself.
The third letter:
Can it be that I have not understood you truly—that I have dared too much—that I have been overbold in writing first to you? While you were silent I laid bare my heart. But if I have misunderstood you, had I no excuse? If you will look back over the past, from the beginning to the end, was it not you who made me to understand what I did?
However that may be, my only regret is that what I have written cannot now be effaced, what I have given cannot now be taken back. But think not that one who loves can for ever submit to disdain. If you do not want my letters, let them be. If you will not reply, this is the end.
Mahendra could no longer stay away. His righteous indignation impelled him homewards. Did Binodini think that it was to forget her that he had fled from home? He would show her by returning at once that she was arrogating too much to herself!
It was at this juncture that Vihari came to his rooms. Mahendra's inward elation was redoubled at the sight of him. Many an unspoken suspicion had hitherto made him jealous of Vihari. After these letters, his jealousy allayed, he welcomed his friend with an extra effusiveness. He rose from his chair, slapped him on the back, and pulled him by the hand into a seat.
But Vihari was gloomy to-day. The poor fellow must have been to see Binodini and met with a rebuff, thought Mahendra.
"Have you been to our place, of late, Vihari?" he asked him.
"That's where I'm coming from," replied Vihari gravely.
Mahendra felt somewhat amused at Vihari's plight. "Unfortunate Vihari!" he thought, "the love of woman is not for him." And as he passed his hand over his breast pocket, the three letters crackled inside: "How did you find everybody at home?" he inquired.
Vihari did not reply to this, but asked in his turn: "How is it that you've left home to stay here?"
"I'm constantly on night-duty now-a-days; it's very inconvenient to be staying all that way off."
"You've had night-duty before, but I've never seen you leave home."
"D'you suspect anything wrong then?" asked Mahendra with a laugh.
"Don't try to be funny, come along home," said Vihari.
Though Mahendra was only too eager to do so, Vihari's importunity made him delude himself into the opposite belief. "How can that be, Vihari?" he said, "I might lose one whole year."
"Look here, Dada," said Vihari seriously, "I've known you since we were children, it's no use trying to play it on me. You are doing a great wrong."
"And whom am I wronging, pray, Mr. Judge?"
"What's become of the heart on which you used to pride yourself?" asked Vihari with some heat.
"It's in hospital at present," chaffed Mahendra.
"Oh stop all that, Mahendra," exclaimed Vihari impatiently; "while you are joking here, Asha is weeping all over the inner and outer appartments of the house."
The idea of Asha in tears gave Mahendra a bit of a shock. "Why should Asha be weeping?" he queried.
"You don't know that," said Vihari bitterly, "and you expect me to know it!"
"If you're angry because your Dada is not omniscient you had better blame his maker." Mahendra said this lightly, but he was astonished at Vihari's emotion. He always had an idea that Vihari was not
