he
wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief. She revelled in it.
She was glad she had cursed him. Her little, light, graceful body that
had been quivering grew calm again, and she turned to hurry home with an
unexpected sense of having pulled some lever in the mechanism that would
bring about results. She neither knew nor cared what results, nor how
they were to happen; she felt that that curse of hers, her first, had
landed on the mark!

But she had come further than she thought. Distance, hot wind, and
emotion had exhausted her far more, too, than she had had time to
realize. Before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished,
she was forced against her stubborn Scots will to sit down on a big
stone by the roadside and rest, while the four that followed came up
close, grinning and passing remarks in anything but under-tones. If
the meaning of the words escaped her, their gestures left little to
be misunderstood. A crowd of stragglers drew together near the
four--laughed with them--took sides in the coarse-worded argument about
Jaimihr's known ambition--and shamed her into pressing on homeward.

But she was forced to rest again, and then again. Physical sickness
prevented her from obeying instinct, reason, will, that all three urged
her on. No false pride now told her to dare the insolence of the guards;
nothing appealed to her but the desire to hurry, hurry, hurry, and do
whatever should appear to need doing when she reached the mission house.
She had no plan in her head. She only knew that she had cursed a man,
and that the curse was potent. But her feet dragged, and her vitality
died down. It was sundown when she reached the mission house, and she
could hear the rising, falling, intermittent din of drums before she saw
her father in the doorway.

"Father!" She ran to him, and he caught her in his arms to save her from
falling headlong. "Father, there is going to be a suttee tonight! Hear
the drums, father! Hear the drums! It'll be tonight! That's to stop the
screams from being heard! Listen to them, father--two suttees, side
by side--I've seen the pyres and the scaffolds--do they jump into the
flames, father, from the scaffolds?--tell me! No-don't tell me--I won't
listen! Take me away from here--away--away--away--take me away, d'you
hear!"

He carried her inside, and laid her on the caned couch in the
living-room, looking like a great, big, helpless, gray-haired baby, as
any man is prone to do