Srikanta
after her own avowal I could not think that she was not a Hindu's daughter.
As soon as the night was over, Indra dug a grave in the place Didi had indicated and we three took Shahji's body there and buried it. It was a place just above the Ganges, formed by the breaking of the gravelly bank and well fitted for a grave. The river flowed past, some forty feet below, and overhead was a screen of branches and wild creepers, a fit place in which to conceal one's treasure. With heavy hearts we three sat side by side. A fourth person had lain down to sleep for ever, his silent heart so near our beating hearts, in the bosom of the earth. The sun had not yet arisen; below flowed the slow-moving Ganges, and its soft murmurs came wafted up to our ears: above us and on all sides the forest-birds sang their morning songs.
Suddenly Didi threw herself down on the grave and cried aloud in a broken voice, 'Mother Ganges, give me too a place at thy feet! I have no other place to call my own!' How true this was I did not understand so well then as I did two days later. Indra glanced at me, and then, going up to the sorrow-stricken woman, he took her head on his lap and said, in a voice of infinite grief, 'Didi, come to my home. My mother is alive, and she will take you to her heart and not keep you at a distance. You do not know how kind she is. Come to her: that is all I ask, Didi. You are a Hindu's daughter, Didi, and not a Musalman.'
Didi did not speak. For some time she lay as if unconscious.
Later, when Didi had roused herself, we all three took a bath in the Ganges. Didi threw her iron bangle into
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