whole world was in love with me; that the stars with sleepless gaze were drinking in my beauty; that the wind was languishing in sighs as on some pretext or other it brushed past me; and that the lawn on which my feet rested, had it been conscious, would have lost consciousness again at their touch. It seemed to me that all the young men in the world were as blades of grass at my feet; and my heart, I know not why, used to grow sad.

‘When my brother's friend, Shekhar, had passed out of the Medical College, he became our family doctor. I had already often seen him from behind a curtain. My brother was a strange man, and did not care to look on the world with open eyes. It was not empty enough for his taste; so he gradually moved away from it, until he was quite lost in an obscure corner. Shekhar was his one friend, so he was the only young man I could ever get to see. And when I held my evening court in my garden, then the host of imaginary young men whom I had at my feet were each one a Shekhar.—Are you listening? What are you thinking of?’

I sighed as I replied: ‘I was wishing I was Shekhar!’

‘Wait a bit. Hear the whole story first. One day, in the rains, I was feverish. The doctor came to see me. That was our first meeting. I was reclining opposite the window, so that the blush of the evening sky might temper the pallor of my complexion. When the doctor, coming in, looked up into my face, I put myself into his place, and gazed at myself in imagination. I saw in the glorious evening light that delicate wan face laid like a drooping flower against the soft white pillow, with the unrestrained curls playing over the forehead, and the bashfully lowered eyelids casting a pathetic shade over the whole countenance.

‘The doctor, in a tone bashfully low, asked my brother: “Might I feel her pulse?”

‘I put out a tired, well-rounded wrist from beneath the coverlet. “Ah!” thought I, as I looked on it, “if only there had been a sapphire bracelet.”[5] I have never before seen a doctor so awkward about feeling a patient's pulse. His fingers trembled as they felt my wrist. He measured the heat of my fever, I gauged the pulse of his heart.—Don't you believe me?’

‘Very easily,’ said I; ‘the human heart-beat tells its tale.’

‘After I had been taken ill and restored to health several times, I found that the number of the courtiers who attended my imaginary evening reception began to dwindle till they were reduced to only one! And at last in my little world there remained only one doctor and one patient.

‘In these evenings I used to dress myself[6] secretly in a canary-coloured sari; twine about the braided knot into which I did my hair a garland of white jasmine blossoms; and with a little mirror in my hand betake myself to my usual seat under the trees.

‘Well! Are you perhaps thinking that the sight of one's own beauty would soon grow wearisome? Ah no! for I did not see myself with my own eyes. I was then one and also two. I used to see myself as though I were the doctor; I gazed, I was charmed, I fell madly in love. But, in spite of all the caresses I lavished on myself, a sigh would wander about my heart, moaning like the evening breeze.

‘Anyhow, from that time I was never alone. When I walked I watched with downcast eyes the play of my dainty little toes on the earth, and wondered what the doctor would have felt had he been there to see. At mid-day the sky would be filled with the glare of the sun, without a sound, save now and then the distant cry of a passing kite. Outside our garden-walls the hawker would pass with his musical cry of “Bangles for sale, crystal bangles.” And I, spreading a snow-white sheet on the lawn, would lie on it with my head on my arm. With studied carelessness the other arm would rest lightly on the soft sheet, and I would imagine to myself that some one had caught sight of the wonderful pose of my hand, that some one had clasped it in both of his and imprinted a kiss on its rosy palm, and was slowly walking away.—What if I ended the story here? How would it do?’

‘Not half a bad ending,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘It would no doubt remain a little incomplete, but I could easily spend the rest of the night putting in the finishing touches.’

‘But that would make the story too serious. Where would the laugh come in? Where would be the skeleton with its grinning teeth?

‘So let me go on. As soon as the doctor had got a little practice, he took a room on the ground-floor of our house for a consulting-chamber. I used then sometimes to ask him jokingly about medicines and poisons, and how much of this drug or that would kill a man. The subject was congenial and he would wax eloquent. These talks familiarised me with the idea of death; and so love and death were the only two things that filled my little world. My story is now nearly ended—there is not much left.’

‘Not much of the night is left either,’ I muttered.

‘After a time I noticed that the doctor had grown strangely absent-minded, and it seemed as if he were ashamed of something which he was trying to keep from me. One day he came in, somewhat smartly dressed, and borrowed my brother's carriage for the evening.

‘My curiosity became too much for me, and I went up to my brother for information. After some talk beside the point, I at last asked him: “By the way, Dada,[7] where is the doctor going this evening in your carriage?”

‘My brother briefly replied: “To his death.”

‘“Oh, do tell me,” I importuned. “Where is he really going?”

‘“To be married,” he said, a little more explicitly.

‘“Oh, indeed!” said I, as I laughed long and loudly.

‘I gradually learnt that the bride was an heiress, who would bring the doctor a large sum of money. But why did he insult me by hiding all this from me? Had I ever begged and prayed him not to marry, because it would break my heart? Men are not to be trusted. I have known only one man in all my life, and in a moment I made this discovery.

‘When the doctor came in after his work and was ready to start, I said to him, rippling with laughter the while: “Well, doctor, so you are to be married to-night?”

‘My gaiety not only made the doctor lose countenance; it thoroughly irritated him.

‘“How is it,” I went on, “that there is no illumination, no band of music?”

‘With a sigh he replied: “Is marriage then such a joyful occasion?”

‘I burst out into renewed laughter. “No, no,” said I, “this will never do. Who ever heard of a wedding without lights and music?”

‘I bothered my brother about it so much that he at once ordered all the trappings of a gay wedding.

‘All the time I kept on gaily talking of the bride, of what would happen, of what I would do when the bride came home. “And, doctor,” I asked, “will you still go on feeling pulses?” Ha! ha! ha! Though the inner workings of people's, especially men's, minds are not visible, still I can take my oath that these words were