"But I am eating, don't you see!"
Mahendra after his meal, clad himself in the thinnest of muslin, and strolled on to the terrace to await the passing of the evening warmth. He was nursing a fervent hope that their daily reading would not be interrupted to-day. But the shades of evening merged into night, the usual time went past, and Mahendra, oppressed with a sense of hopelessness, retired to bed.
The blushing, faltering Asha, bedecked and adorned for the night,[1] came up with slow steps to their bed-room—only to find Mahendra in bed! She felt she could not advance a single step further. After a period of separation, comes a momentary sense of strangeness. The thread of companionship cannot be taken up exactly where it was severed,—a mutual introductory greeting is required afresh. How then could Asha accept the joy of re-union without an invitation? She stood for a while at the doorway, but there was no sound from Mahendra. With one hesitating step after another she guardedly made her way into the room, feeling as though she would die of shame if even one of her ornaments tinkled. When with fast-beating heart she reached the mosquito-curtain, she found Mahendra fast asleep. Each one of the touches she had given to her toilet, her draperies, seemed to deride her. For a moment she wanted to fly from the room, to spend the night anywhere else but there.
At last she crept into bed as noiselessly as she could. Nevertheless the unfastening and re-fastening of the mosquito-curtain and the creaking of the bed-stead would have been enough to waken Mahendra, had he been really sleeping. He did not stir, simply because he was not asleep. Mahendra was lying with his face turned the other way, so Asha lay behind him. But even so, Mahendra could feel that she was silently weeping. A sense of his own cruelty made his heart feel as if between two millstones,—but for the life of him he could not find a caress to offer, or a word to say. His conscience lashed him with scornful condemnation,—that gave him pain, but did not show the way out. "In the morning," thought he, "I can no longer pretend to be asleep. What am I to say or do then?"
Asha solved the problem for him. At the break of dawn she, with her slighted adornments, left the bed. She also knew not how to show her face to him in the morning,
XXXI
"Why has this happened, what have I done?" was the burden of Asha's thoughts. But the real point of danger eluded her vision; that Mahendra could be in love with Binodini was a thing even the possibility of which had never struck her. She had no experience of the world, and she could never imagine Mahendra to be otherwise than what she had concluded him to be immediately after their marriage.
Mahendra that morning went off to college early. It had been Asha's habit to stand at the window at the time of his departure, and as the carriage drove off Mahendra would look up and they would exchange a parting glance. At the sound of the carriage to-day Asha mechanically went to the window. Mahendra, also from habit, raised his eyes. He saw her standing, unbathed, untidy, her hair undone, her careworn face gazing into space; and in an instant his eyes reverted to the book on his knee. Where was the smiling glance, the unspoken greeting?
The carriage drove off. Asha sank down on the floor where she was. The savour had gone out of her life, of her world. It was past ten, the full tide of business had set in. The stream of carriages going towards the city was endless, and the tramcars followed one another in rapid procession; and this stricken failing heart, seemed so utterly out of place beside the hubbub of this bustling traffic.
All of a sudden Asha seemed to light upon a_ discovery. "I understand!" thought she. "He's angry because brother Vihari went to Benares. But," she wondered, "how could that be my fault?" And as she pursued her thought, her heart suddenly stopped dead for an instant. Could Mahendra have suspected that she had anything to do with it? What an unspeakably shameful suspicion! It was horrible enough to have had him connecting her name with Vihari at all: she would die a thousand deaths if he could harbour a suspicion like this! And if he did have any misgivings, or
- ↑ The night-dress is not essentially different from the day-dress. Dressing for the night implies only a fresh toilet and a change.
