A peal of mocking laughter greeted the words. "Bah! Now I have roused thee. 'Tis all a lie, Shunker, all a lie! Only a trick of starving Kirpo's! And yet, somehow he favours thee as thou mightest have been before the grease came to spoil beauty. For all that not like Nuttu, the sickly one. Nuttu will die, this one will live. Wilt thou not, heart's darling and delight?" She covered the babe with a storm of passionate kisses. "Kirpo! by all the torments of hell--" urged Shunker. "What! art there already? Not so fast, Lâlâ! not so fast. Wait till I bring this babe to curse thy pyre, to spit on thy ashes,--thy son--thy son!" "It is a lie!" burst in the wretched man, beside himself with doubt, certainty, and desire. "He is not mine." "Well said, Shunker, well said!" laughed Kirpo triumphantly, growing calmer with her evident success. "He is not thine, he is mine." She folded her veil round the sleeping child with a flourish, as if to emphasise her words, and stepped backwards. As she stood there sombre, malignant, the winged thoughts flew through Shunker's brain. There is, strictly speaking, no possible divorce, no remarriage for the Hindu; but if Râmu could be got out of the way, he, Shunker Dâs, might pose as a social reformer. It was a fine idea. Or he might,--a thousand suggestions found expression in the covetous hands he stretched towards his victim. "Kirpo, listen!" "I will not listen. I gave the chance for the child's sake. Now--" "Kirpo! take what thou likest--" "I _will_ take what I like, Lâlâ. That is revenge!" Before he could say another word she had turned her back on him, and ere he could rise to stop her was down the narrow stair and out into the street with her precious burden.