I went to Zora, my own gentle Zora. She had been speaking much of visiting her kindred, and though I had put her off as well as I could since we arrived, I saw with concern that I had no longer any pretext for detaining her. I could have fled with her--I think I could. Such was the intensity of my love for her, that, had I had the courage to speak of flight and she had agreed to accompany me, I verily believe I should have forsaken father, associates, and profession, and committed myself to the world. And if I had, said the Thug, musing, should I have been worse off than I am now? should I ever have worn these disgraceful fetters? have ever doomed myself to perpetual imprisonment and a state of existence which I would to heaven were ended, and should be ended, but that I have (and I curse myself for it), a mean, base, aye, cowardly lingering for life! Sahib, I tell you it would have been well for me had I then fled--fled from guilt and crime, into which I daily plunged deeper. With my soldierlike figure, my address, my skill in the use of arms, I might have gained honourable service; I might have led armies, or have met a soldier's death on some battle-field! But it was not so written; it was not my fate, and I am what I am--a curse to myself, and to all with whom I have ever been connected. Zora! she thought not of my anxiety; all she hoped for, cared for now, was to see her mother and her sister. She assailed me with importunities that I would send her, and assured me that she would not be long absent, but go to them she must; they would so rejoice to see her again, and would welcome me as her deliverer. After seeing them she would return to me, and we should never again be parted. "Alas!" I said, "my Zora, you know not what you ask. Do you think that those charms are of no value to your mother and sister? You have owned to me that you are far more beautiful and attractive than any of those you are connected with. In your absence they will have sunk into obscurity, and they will hail your return as the earnest of more wealth and more distinction." "Nay, these are cruel words, my beloved," she replied; "you well know that I have never deceived you, and that, as true as that I breathe, my soul is yours for ever. So let me go, I pray you, and in a few hours I shall be again with you, and pressed to your honoured breast." "Be it so," said I, sadly; for though I hardly dared think it, I felt as if this was our parting for ever. "Go, then; and if you return not, I will come to you by the evening." A covered zenana cart was easily hired; and the driver seeming perfectly to understand where she wished to go, she stepped joyfully into it, attended by her old servant, and, with two of my men to attend her, she left me.