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14 six months old when my mother died too. I had a very bad time in my uncle's house. Then all of a sudden I heard that you had turned up from somewhere and taken a fancy to me. We were married two days later and you know what happened after that!"

Ramesh fell back helplessly on his pillow. The moon had risen but there seemed to be no lustre in its rays. He dreaded to put another question and he tried to thrust aside what he had heard as a dream, a delusion. A warm south wind began softly to stir like the sigh of an awakening sleeper, a wakeful cuckoo was chanting forth its monotonous notes in the moonlight. From the boats moored at the neighbouring landing-place the boatmen's song rose in the air. Finding Ramesh apparently oblivious of her existence the girl nudged him gently. "Sleeping?" she queried.

"No," said Ramesh, but he gave no further response and she quietly dropped off to sleep. Ramesh sat up and gazed at her, but there was no indication on her forehead of the secret that Fate had written there. How was it possible that so dreadful a destiny could be masked by such loveliness?