But that did not lessen the sentence.
[THE FOOTSTEPS OF A DOG]
She passed, smiling softly, though a vague trouble seemed to clutch at her heart. She had found him asleep so often of late, and if the driver slept, the oxen might well pause in their task of drawing water, and so the fields which needed it so much be deprived for yet another day of their life-giving draught. They were not, however, pausing now, at any rate. Their slow circling brought her sleeping husband to Sarsuti's eyes, and carried him away again, wheeling round by the well from whose depths a stream of water splashed drowsily into a wooden trough and then hurried away--a little ribbed ribbon of light--out of the shade of the great banyan tree into the sun-saturated soil beyond where the young millet was sprouting.
How cool it was, after her hot walk from the village! No wonder he slept! She sat herself down beside the runnel of water where a jasmine bush threw wild whips of leaf and blossom over the damp earth. There was no need to wake him yet. The bullocks would not pause now that she was there to make them do their work.
That was her task in life!--to make them do their work.
She sighed, and yet she smiled again, as the slow-circling oxen brought her husband Prema almost to her feet once more. How handsome he was, his bare head lying on the turban he had pressed into the service of a pillow. And his slender limbs! How ingeniously he had curved them on the forked seat so as to gain a comfortable resting-place! Trust Prema to make himself and everyone else in the world comfortable! A sudden leap of her heart sent the blood to dye her dark face still darker, as she thought of the softness, the warmth, the colour he had brought into her life.
How long had they been married? Ten years--a whole ten years, and there was never a child yet. It was getting time. No! No! Not yet--not yet! She need not look that in the face yet.
She rose suddenly as the wheeling oxen brought him to her once more, and staying them with one swift word, bent over the sleeping man.
"Prem!" she said. "Prema! I am here." His arms were round her in an instant, his lips on hers; for here, out in the shadow amongst the sunshine, they were alone.
"Sarsuti! Wife!" he murmured drowsily, then with a laugh, shook his long length and stood beside her, his arm still about her waist. Tall as he was, she was almost as tall, a straight, upstanding Jatni woman with eyebrows like a broad bar across her face.