Page:Stories of Bengalee life - Prabhat Kumar Mukerji.pdf/168

156 "I meant going to the coal mines; and it is there I will go and take a contract. The work is hard, but profitable."

Suddenly Sarat said—"I will go with you."

Binod sprang up in the bed. "You will go, Sarat?"—he said, joyfully. "Can you go?"

"I can. Have you thought for a moment what I shall have to endure from people's tongues if you go and I stay? The whole country will jeer at us; people will say whatever comes into their minds, and I shall have to sit and listen to them."

Binod's joy was overcast. Sarat's flight meant not self-devotion only, but self-protection. After a while he said—"Then we will go together."

"When?"

"It is arranged that I shall go to Calcutta early on the day after to-morrow. So before we sleep I will put the money in the hand bag and place it in this room. At about two o'clock in the morning we will go. We will take a small cottage near the mines. The place is quite unknown. There we will begin a new life."

What was it that arose in the girl bride's mind amid anger and sorrow? One phrase kept thrusting itself upon her—"You have brought my schemes to the ground." The thought was a sweet one. Her husband had been unable to fly, leaving her behind. It was like one sweet