Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/223

 with him; no co-wife would come into her life to separate her from him; barren woman though she was, the man she loved would be hers for all his days, and no one would arise to dispute with her her right- her sole right-to tend and comfort and cherish him.

The medicine-man turned away and walked slowly up the path along the river bank, counting the coppers in his hand, and Minah stood where he had left her, gazing after him, a prey to tumultuous and conflicting emotions. Then a realization of the tragedy of it overwhelmed her, a yearning, pas- sionate pity for the man she loved, and in an agony of self-reproach she threw herself face downward on the ground. Lying there among the warm damp grasses, clutching thein in her hands, and burying her face in them to suppress her sobs, she prayed passionately and inarticulately, prayed to the leprosy itself, as though it were a sentient being. entreating it, if indeed it must have a victim, to take her and spare her husband. Her rudimentary con- ceptions of religion did not bid her turn to God in the hour of her despair; and though, moved by the instinct which impels all human beings in the hour of their sorest need to turn for aid to invisible Powers, she poured out plaint and supplication, her thoughts were never for a moment directed Heavenward. She was a daughter of the Muhanumadans, unskilled in letters, ignorant utterly of the teachings of her faith, and, like all her people, she was a Malay first and a follower of the Prophet accidentally, and, as it were, by an afterthought. Therefore her cry was