Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/145

 ‘By the time the doctor returned, all my wife’s pains had ceased with her life.’

Dokhin Babu, taking another gulp of water, exclaimed: ‘Ugh, it’s terribly hot,’ and then, going on to the veranda, he paced rapidly up and down two or three times. Coming back he sat down, and began again. It was clear enough that he did not want to tell me; but it seemed as if, by some sort of magic, I was dragging the story cut of him. He went on:

‘After my marriage with Monorama, whenever I tried to talk effusively to her, she looked grave. It seemed as if there was in her mind some hint of suspicion which I could not understand.

‘It was at this time that I began to have a fondness for drink.

‘One evening in the early autumn, I was strolling with Monorama in our garden by the river. The darkness had the feeling of a phantom world about it, and there was not even the occasional sound of the birds rustling their wings in their sleep. Only on both sides of the path along which we were walking the tops of the casuarina trees sighed in the breeze.

‘Feeling tired, Monorama went and lay down