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15O

THE WRECK

sented of her wedded life was a mere pencil outline, incomplete in parts and totally uncoloured.

Hitherto she had never found occasion disinctly to note the meagreness of it. She had known instinc- tively that something was lacking and there had been promptings to revolt, but she had never clearly envi- saged what it was that was wanting.

No sooner was the ice broken than Sailaja began to talk of her husband. One had but to touch what was the keynote of her life and it gave forth no un- certain sound; but Kamala knew that she could not play on that string. She had nothing to say about her husband ; for such discourse she had neither the mate- rial nor the desire.

While Sailaja's craft coursed merrily down-stream with its freight of happiness, Kamala's empty bark stuck miserably in the shallows.

Sailaja's husband, Bipin, was employed in the Opium Factory at Ghazipur. Chakrabartti had only two daughters and the elder lived with her husband's people. The old man could not face separation from the younger, hence he had selected as her husband a young man without means who was content to accept the post which Chakrabartti by judicious wire-pulling obtained for him and to live with his wife's parents.

Sailaja suddenly broke off the conversation in the middle with the remark, "Excuse me for a few minutes, dear ; I shan't be long." She then proceeded to explain a little self-consciously that her husband had just come in from his bath and that she must give him breakfast before he went to the office.

"How did you know he had come in?" asked Kamala in the innocence of her heart.

"Now don't make fun of me," retorted Sailaja. "How does any one know that? Don't you know your husband's step when you hear it?"

She laughed, pinched Kamala's cheek, flung over her