Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/199

 and foolish husband used to imagine that to give is the way to get. The fact was just the contrary.

‘The result of this was that Mani looked upon her husband as a mere machine for turning out her Dacca muslins and her bangles—so perfect a machine, indeed, that never for a single day did she need to oil its wheels.

‘Though Bhusan’s birthplace was Phulbere, here was his place of business, where, for the sake of his work, he spent most of his time. At his Phulbere house he had no mother, but had plenty of aunts and uncles and other relatives, from which distraction he brought away his wife to this house and kept her to himself alone. But there is this difference between a wife and one’s other possessions, that by keeping her to oneself one may lose her beyond recovery.

‘Bhusan’s wife did not talk very much, nor did she mix much with her neighbours. To feed Brahmans in obedience to a sacred vow, or to give a few pice to a religious mendicant, was not her way. In her hands nothing was ever lost; whatever she got she saved up most carefully, with the one exception of the memory of her husband’s caresses. The extraordinary thing was that she did not seem to lose the least atom of her youth-