"What is in it?" asked the old lady, eyeing the strange bundle with a frightened look such as the girl herself had worn until the excitement of being near her goal had driven it from her face.
"I must throw them into the Ganges River," repeated the girl. "They are my husband's bones," she whispered eagerly, lowering her voice. "When they burned his body I crept along and after all had left I picked them out of the pile of ashes and here they are!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "For two years I have kept them near me day and night and saved all my money to come to Benares to throw them into the Ganges River that I might be forgiven for his death and that he might have life and happiness as the priest said. But if the Ganges River is here, surely this place will do as well as Benares. I am so tired! I am so tired of being a cursed woman!" she sobbed, her excitement giving way to tears. "I want to be happy. Take me to the Ganges River!"
The old woman's expression had turned from fright to astonishment as she heard what the bundle contained; but at the girl's sobs her face grew sweet with a motherly tenderness. She turned away as if to think, murmuring to herself, "The memsahib will surely forgive me if I come a little late. She would like to have me help this poor child, I know, and perhaps she might make her an ayah like me if I take her with me. That would make the girl happy, indeed. Yes, I will help her."
Then she turned back to the girl. Tenderly taking her free hand, for one still tightly clasped the precious bundle, the old woman said, "Come, we will find the way to the sacred river."
Quickly the two went down the platform, now somewhat thinned of the earlier crowd, and passed through the station gate, the old woman still holding the girl's hand and the girl still tightly holding the bundle which was to be the price of life and happiness to her.
IX
Bachelor Dreams
Caldwell-Sahib, opening his eyes, let his head roll slowly over on his pillow. As the veranda door came within his line of vision the delicious drowsiness which had held him was suddenly disturbed, for there stood, looking out across the rows of potted plants to the dry lawn beyond, a woman whom he had never seen. For several moments he simply stared in weakness. Then, trying to brush away the strange, sickly haze which enveloped his brain, he let his eyes rove over the room as far as he could without physical effort. There in the corner was his desk. There, hanging above it, was the picture of the Taj which he had bought when Parsons had paid him a flying visit from England and they had gone to Agra together. Just to the right, out of the edge of his eye, he could see the foot of his steamer chair and, extending from beneath it, the hand-woven rug which he himself had spent a week in buying from a native dealer in Delhi, holding grimly to his first bid each day as he had passed the shop on his constitutional until a bargain had been struck the very day his train pulled out. Those things certainly belonged to him, but the woman did not. Where had she come from? For there she was still as his eyes again reached the door.
His strangely tired mind was just getting to the point of realizing what she looked like—that she was tall and fair—when the woman turned her face towards him and with a smile came to the bed.