Srikanta
few clothes neatly arranged on it: nothing else. I felt some delicacy in entering the room with shoes on: I left them outside the door and, as this first attempt to walk any distance had wearied me, I sat down, absent-mindedly, on her bed,—a thing I should not have done, I am sure, if there had been anything else in the room to sit upon. Shading the open window in front of me was an enormous neem tree; and a gentle breeze was blowing through it. As I sat gazing listlessly at it, my absent-mindedness must have deepened. My attention was suddenly aroused by a sweet tune, and looking round I saw that Piari had entered the room humming a song. She had been to bathe in the Ganges, and had come to change her wet clothes. She had not yet seen me. She went straight to the clothes-rack and was about to take one of the saris arranged on it, when I suddenly burst out, 'Why do you not take your clothes with you to the bathing-place?'
She looked at me surprised and then broke out into a smile. 'Well, I never!' she said. 'You come into my room like a thief,—no, no, don't get up, don't go—I'll go into the other room and change', and she stepped out lightly with the silk sari in her hand. She came back in a few minutes with a cheerful face, and asked me with a smile, 'You know there is nothing in my room. What did you come here to steal? Are you sure it isn't me?'
'How can you think me so ungrateful?' I asked. 'You have done so much for me, and can I now end by stealing you, of all things? I hope I am not so covetous.'
Piari's face became pale. I had not thought that my words could give her pain. I had no wish to pain her, especially when I was thinking of leaving the place within
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