31

Asha had returned. Binodini greeted her with extravagant reproach: "Bali, you were away so long --- could you not write a single letter?"

"But you didn't write either, did you, Bali?" said Asha.

"Why should I write first?" said Binodini.

"Surely it was for you to write." Asha wound her arms around Binodini's neck and confessed her fault.

"You know me, Bali," she said.

"I write so badly. And writing to someone as learned as you --- it embarrasses me." In no time their little quarrel dissolved, and their affection welled up warm between them.

"You have utterly spoilt your husband by being at his side every hour of the day and night," said Binodini.

"He cannot bear to be without someone near him."

"That is precisely why I left him in your charge," said Asha.

"You know far better than I do how to keep a man company."

"During the day I could manage well enough --- I would send him off to college and have my peace. But in the evenings there was no escape. I had to sit and talk, read aloud to him --- the demands were simply endless."

"Well, serves you right! If you will go about enchanting people, you can hardly expect them to let you go."

"Take care, Bali," said Binodini, dropping her voice.

"The way your husband carries on --- sometimes I wonder whether he suspects me of casting some sort of spell." Asha laughed.

"If you don't know that art, who does? If I had even a fraction of your powers, life would be a great deal easier."

"Good heavens, whose ruin are you plotting? Guard what you already have at home, Bali --- don't waste your efforts trying to bewitch others. It only leads to trouble." Asha flapped her hand at Binodini in mock scolding.

"Oh, do stop talking such nonsense." When they met for the first time after her return from Kashi, Mahendra said, "You seem to have kept perfectly well --- you've grown quite plump." Asha felt acutely ashamed.

Her health had no business being good --- and yet nothing in Asha's life would ever behave as it ought. When her heart had been in such anguish, her wretched body had gone and put on flesh. She struggled to express her feelings in words at the best of times, and now even her body gave the lie to what she felt.

"And how have you been?" she asked softly.

In the old days Mahendra would have said, half in jest and half in earnest, "I have been dying without you." But now the jest would not come; it caught somewhere in his throat.

"Well enough," he said.

"I cannot complain." Asha looked at him and thought he had grown thinner since she left.

His face was pale, and in his eyes burned a peculiar fierce brightness, as though some inner hunger were consuming him with slow, invisible flame. She felt a pang of sorrow and thought: my poor husband has not been well --- and I went and left him in Kashi. She had grown round with good health while he had wasted away, and for this very reason she felt a sharp contempt for her own flourishing body. Mahendra, casting about for something further to say, asked after a pause, "Your aunt is well, I trust?" Having received his answer, he found himself unable to summon a second sentence.

A torn old newspaper lay nearby; he reached for it and began turning the pages with an absent air. Asha stared at the floor and thought: we have not seen each other for so long, and yet he has barely spoken to me --- he could not even bring himself to look at my face. Is he angry that I did not write for three or four days? Is he displeased that I stayed so long at Kashi at my aunt's bidding? With a bruised and patient heart she searched herself for the crack through which she might have given offence.

Mahendra returned from college. At the evening meal Rajlakshmi was present, and Asha stood not far off in the doorway, her face partly veiled, but no one else was in the room. Rajlakshmi looked up with an anxious expression.

"Are you unwell today, Mahin?"

"No, Ma," said Mahendra irritably.

"What should be the matter with me?"

"But you are scarcely eating a thing."

"There," said Mahendra, with the same edge of vexation.

"I am eating, am I not?" In the summer dusk Mahendra wrapped a thin shawl about himself and paced back and forth on the roof.

He had cherished a strong hope that their customary evening reading would not be abandoned tonight. Anandamath was nearly finished --- only two or three chapters remained. However hard-hearted Binodini might be, surely she would read those chapters to him this very evening. But the dusk faded into night, the hour passed, and Mahendra was left to carry the heavy weight of his disappointment to bed. Asha, dressed and adorned and burning with shyness, entered the bedroom with slow steps.

She saw that Mahendra had already lain down. She stood there unable to think how to go forward. After a separation, even the briefest, a new hesitancy steals over two people --- each waits, before they can resume where they left off, for some new word of welcome from the other. How was Asha to enter unasked into that familiar bed of joy which had always been hers? She stood in the doorway for a long time and heard nothing from Mahendra. Step by step she crept forward, dreading that some piece of jewellery might jangle and betray her.

With a trembling heart she reached the mosquito net and understood that Mahendra was asleep. At that instant her own finery seemed to close about her from all sides and mock her. She longed to fly from the room and sleep somewhere else. Asha climbed onto the bed as noiselessly as she could, yet there was movement enough that Mahendra, had he been truly sleeping, would have stirred. But tonight his eyes did not open --- for Mahendra was not asleep. He lay turned away at the far edge of the bed, so that Asha was left lying behind him.

He could plainly tell, even with his back turned, that Asha was weeping in silence. His own cruelty ground against his heart like a millstone. But what to say, how to offer the gentlest caress --- he could not think. He tormented himself inwardly with stroke after stroke of self-reproach; he felt every blow, but found no way out. He thought: I cannot feign sleep into the morning --- when we come face to face at dawn, what on earth shall I say to Asha? Asha herself spared him that ordeal.

In the earliest grey of morning she rose from the bed, carrying her humiliated finery with her, and slipped away --- she too was unable to show her face to Mahendra.