Page:Stories of Bengalee life - Prabhat Kumar Mukerji.pdf/79

Rh Trying to raise his wife from her seat, Nagendra Babu said—"Oh Charu! Don't be so unreasonable, dear. What is there to cry about?"

Charusila gently pushed her husband away, saying—"Don't, please, speak to me to-day. Keep away from me, just for this day—I implore you." So saying she got up and walked away to her bedroom.

Nagendra Babu came out of the house and sat in the front verandah. The servant prepared his chelum. He once more abandoned himself to its ever consoling fumes. He smoked two or three chelums in succession during which the summer twilight deepened into the gloom of night. He gave himself up to bitter self-reproach as he smoked. He thought what he was when, fresh from College, he first sat on the ejlash as a Deputy Magistrate—and, what he has become since. To-day Charusila begged him not to speak to her, to stay away from her. No doubt she considered him fallen—contaminated,—was she wrong? Has he not, wearing the sacred robe of Justice to-day, dragged her to the mire instead of upholding and cherishing her? And, this was not the first time that he had done so. What made him stoop so low?—Was it not filthy lucre? The result of long years of culture and discipline—his sense of duty, piety, moral rectitude—why had he scattered these