Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/119

 Satish, saying: ‘I have grievously sinned at your feet. May I hope for pardon?’

Satish, with his eyes fixed on the ground, replied: ‘I also have sinned. Let me first purge my sin away, and then will I claim forgiveness.’

It became clear to me, on our way to Calcutta, what a devastating fire had all along been raging within Damini. I was so scorched by its heat that I could not restrain myself from breaking out in revilement of Satish.

Damini stopped me frenziedly. ‘Don’t you dare talk so in my presence!’ she exclaimed. ‘Little do you know what he saved me from! You can only see my sorrow. Had you no eyes for the sorrow he has been through, in order to save me? The hideous tried once to destroy the beautiful, and got well kicked for its pains.—Serve it right!—Serve it right!’—Damini began to beat her breast violently with her clenched hands. I had to hold them back by main force.

When we arrived in the evening, I left Damini at her aunt’s and went over to a lodging-house, where I used to be well known. My old acquaintances started at sight of me. ‘Have you been ill?’ they cried.

By next morning’s post I got a letter from