"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!" said Tara under her breath. That settled it, and at dawn the next day Tara stood in her odd little perch above the shrine among the pigeons, looking down curiously at the mem who, wearied out by her long midnight walk through the city and all the excitement of the day, had dozed off on a bare mat in the corner, her head resting on her arm. Three months ago Kate could not have slept without a pillow; now, as she lay on the hard ground, her face looked soft and peaceful in sheer honest dreamless sleep. But Tara had not slept; that was to be told from the anxious strain of her eyes. She had sat out since she had returned home, on her two square yards of balcony in the waning moonlight, looking down on the unseen shrine, hidden by the tall peepul tree whose branches she could almost touch.
Would the mem really be suttee? she had asked herself again and again. Would she do so much for the master? Would she--would she really shave her head? A grim smile of incredulity came to Tara's face, then a quick, sharp frown of pain. If she did, she must care very much for the Huzoor. Besides, she had no right to do it! The mems were never suttee. They married again many times. And then this mem was married to someone else. No! she would never shave her head for a strange man. She might take off her jewels, she might even sweep the floor. But shave her head? Never!
But supposing she did?
The oddest jumble of jealousy and approbation filled Tara's heart. So, as the yellow dawn broke, she bent over Kate.
"Wake, mem sahib!" she said, "wake. It is time to prepare for the day. It is time to get ready."
Kate started up, rubbing her eyes, wondering where she was; as in truth she well might, for she had never been in such a place before. The long, low slip of a room was absolutely empty save for a reed mat or two; but every inch of it, floor, walls, ceiling, was freshly plastered with mud. That on the floor was still wet, for Tara had been at work on it already. Over each doorway hung a faded chaplet, on each lintel was printed the mark of a bloody hand, and round and about, in broad finger-marks of red and white, ran the eternal Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm! in Sanskrit letterings. In truth, Tara's knowledge of secular and religious learning was strictly confined to this sentence. There was a faint smell of incense in the room, rising from a tiny brazier sending up a blue spiral flame of smoke before a two-inch high brass idol with an elephant's head which sat on a niche in the wall. It represented Eternal Wisdom. But Kate did not know this. Nor in a way did Tara. She only knew it was Gunesh-jee. And outside was the yellow dawn, the purple pigeons beginning to coo and sidle, the quivering hearts of the peepul leaves.
"I have everything ready for the mem," began Tara hurriedly, "if she will take off her jewels."
"You must pull this one open for me, Tara," said Kate, holding out her arm with the gold bangle on it. "The master put it on for me, and I have never had it off since."
Tara knew that as well as she. Knew that the master must have put it on, since she had not. Had, in fact, watched it with jealous eyes over and over again. And there was the mem without it, smiling over the scantiness and the intricacies of a coarse cotton shroud.
"There is the hair yet," said Tara with quite a catch in her voice; "if the mem will undo the plaits, I will go round to the old poojârnis and get the loan of her razor--she only lives up the next stair."