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CHAPTER XXXVI

"Aren't you well to-day, dear," asked Sailaja when Kamala returned, "have you a headache?"

"No, I'm all right; why isn't Uncle here?"

"Mother sent him off to Allahabad to see my sister there; she hasn't been well for some time."

"When will he be back?"

"He'll be away for a week at least, they say. You've been overdoing it, working at that bungalow of yours all day. You're looking very tired. Have your sup- per early and go to bed."

Kamala's only salvation at this stage would have been to take Saila into her confidence but that, she felt, was impossible. Nothing would induce her to confess to Saila of all people that the man whom she supposed to be her husband was not her husband at all.

Kamala shut herself into her own room and read Ramesh's letter again by the light of her lamp.

Neither the name nor the whereabouts of the per- son addressed appeared in the letter but the contents clearly indicated that that person was a woman, that she had been betrothed to Ramesh, and that his con- nection with Kamala had caused the engagement to be broken off. Further, Ramesh had not concealed the fact that he loved with all his heart the woman to whom he was writing and that it was for the sake of the hapless Kamala, whose fate had been so curiously linked with his own, that he had severed connection with her.

Kamala recalled bit by bit the whole of her life

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