Page:Tales of Bengal (S. B. Banerjea).djvu/218

182 gruffly, "Get up, collect your chattels, and follow me. I am going to take you back to Sádhu's." Maini obeyed without a word of remonstrance, and a quarter of an hour later the ill-assorted pair might have been seen walking towards Simulgachi.

The rainy season was now in full swing, and their path lay across a deep nullah (ravine) through which mighty volumes of drainage water were finding their way to the Ganges. On reaching a bamboo foot-bridge which spanned it, Ramzán ordered his wife to go first. Ere she reached the opposite bank, he gave her a violent shove, which sent her shrieking vainly for help into the swirling torrent below.

Hardly had Ramzán perpetrated this odious deed than he felt he would give his chances of bihisht (paradise) to recall it. He ran along the bank shouting frantically, "Maini! Maini!" Alas! her slender body was carried like a straw by the foaming water towards the Ganges and soon disappeared in a bend of the nullah. Then her murderer sat down and gave himself up to despair. But the sun was up; people were stirring in the fields; and so he slunk homewards. Fatima stood on the threshold and raised her eyebrows inquiringly; but Ramzán thrust her aside, muttering, "It is done," and shut himself up in his wife's room. There everything reminded him of her; the scrupulous neatness of floor and