His coolness, his failure to remark on the evident meaning of her changed dress, calmed her somewhat.
"I want nothing," she replied sullenly. "A suttee wants nothing in this world, and I am suttee. I have been the master's servant for gratitude's sake--now I am the servant of God for righteousness' sake." So far she had, spoken as if the dignified words had been pre-arranged; now she paused in a sort of wistful anger at the indifference on his face. The words meant so much to her, and, as she ceased from them, their controlling power seemed to pass also, and she flung out her arms wildly, then brought them down in stinging blows upon her breasts.
"I am suttee. Yes! I am suttee! Reject me not again, ye Shining Ones! reject me not again."
The cry was full of exalted resolve and despair. It made Jim Douglas step up to her, and seizing both hands, hold them fast.
"Don't be a fool, Tara!" he said sternly. "Tell me, sensibly, what all this means. Tell me what you are going to do."
His touch seemed to scorch her, for she tore herself away from it vehemently; yet it seemed also to quiet her, and she watched him with somber eyes for a minute ere replying: "I am going to Holy Gunga. Where else should a suttee go? The Water will not reject me as the Fire did, since, before God! I am suttee. As the master knows,"--her voice held a passionate appeal,--"I have been suttee all these long years. Yet now I have given up all--all!"
With a swift gesture, full of womanly grace, but with a sort of protest against such grace in its utter abandonment and self-forgetfulness, she flung out her arms once more. This time to raise the shrouding veil from her head and shoulders. Against this background of white gleaming in the moonlight, her new-shaven skull showed death-like, ghastly. Jim Douglas recoiled a step, not from the sight itself, but because he knew its true meaning; knew that it meant self-immolation if she were left to follow her present bent. She would simply go down to the Ganges and drown herself. An inconceivable state of affairs, beyond all rational understanding; but to be reckoned with, nevertheless, as real, inevitable.
"What a pity!" he said, after a moment's pause had told him that it would be well to try and take the starch out of her resolution by fair means or foul, leaving its cause for future inquiry. "You had such nice hair. I used to admire it very much."
Her hands fell slowly, a vague terror and remorse came to her eyes; and he pursued the advantage remorselessly. "Why did you cut it off?" He knew, of course, but his affected ignorance took the color, the intensity from the situation, by making her feel her coup de theatre had failed.
"The Huzoor must know," she faltered, anger and disappointment and vague doubt in her tone, while her right hand drew itself over the shaven skull as if to make sure there was no mistake. "I am suttee--" The familiar word seemed to bring certainty with it, and she went on more confidentially. "So I cut it all off and it lies there, ready, as I am, for purification."