'I don't know, Rajlakshmi,' I said, 'whether you will believe me, but the real story is somewhat strange', and I related to her all that had happened to me. While she was listening I felt, more than once, a tremor run through the hand that lay in mine, but she said not a word. The curtain was raised, and, looking out, I saw that the sky had grown clear. 'I must go now,' I said.
'No' said Piari, and her voice sounded hollow as if she were lost in a trance.
'What do you mean, Piari? Do you know what my going away like this will mean?’
'I know, I know: but these people are not your guardians, that they can force you to lose your life to save your reputation.' She dropped my hand and, seizing my feet, cried out in an agonised tone, 'Kanta-da,'[1] you won't live if you go back to that place. I don't want you to go with me, but I can't let you go back there either. I will buy you your railway ticket. Go home or anywhere else you like, but don’t think of staying there a minute longer.'
'But what about my things?' I asked.
'No matter,' said Piari. 'They will send them back to you, if they like. If they don't, they're not so very valuable, after all, are they?'
'That’s true,' I admitted; 'they're not of any great value. But the false rumours that will arise, what of them?'
- ↑ Kanta, for Srikanta. Da is a suffix meaning 'brother'. It will be remembered that Piari, when a mere girl, knew Srikanta in his boyhood. 'Kanta-da' is the appellation by which she used to call him then: girls in a village often call their boy comrades, senior in age, brothers in this fashion. Here the tenderness that suddenly rises up in Piari's heart is a resurrection of the old simple tenderness of childhood.
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