Chris stood quite still.
'It is not idle,' he replied in a set voice, 'I--I begged of her----'
His mother gave a horrified exclamation. 'And she did fling the corn in the gutter! The Gods are good that worse did not come of it! The wicked one! For this I might have killed my son; for hadst thou come in, I would have known----'
'I was not coming in,' said Chris, reverting to a Western quickness of speech, 'tell her that, please, Amma.'
His mother pursed up her lips. 'I have a mind not; as I have a mind not to give thee what she sent.'
'What she sent?' echoed Chris hotly. 'Give it me, mother, give it at once!'
One corner of the shroud came out from the folds obediently. It was knotted round something small and scented; and--even through that shroud--the perfume of roses drifted from it into the rosy room.
'Lo! there it is--that, and her sense of sin. She hath done penance, as I said, but she shall do ten more or ever I return!'
It was only a little round cardboard box she put into his hand; a box with a quaint domed lid such as girls keep their trinkets in, but it was covered and lined with brocaded silk that must have been soaked in attar from the scent it held, and that somehow suggested the scented fingers which had sewed on the silver and gold twists, the little pearls and crystals, with which it was so cunningly adorned. Chris had seen such caskets often in the days when he had gone to weddings with his mother; they were part of the bride's trousseau, made always by the bride herself.
And this one Naraini had made. He opened it with a strange mixture of fear and hope: fear lest it might contain something to spoil that picture of the girl his memory held, and that held his fancy; hope that it might hold something to enhance it.