“Well, I sent for some food at once and waited to see it distributed, and while waiting looked about the place. I noticed the upper rooms and thought of the woman, so I inquired about her. They told me that her sahib had left her to go to Wilayat; that she mourned for him day after day and at last died of a broken heart, uska dil tut gaya, her heart broken went. Then the old mamagee who had been the servant of this choti mem sahib took care of the two children, a boy and a girl, as they had nothing to live on. The muhalla people gave them something till the famine came and they had nothing for themselves. One day the mamagee took the children one by each hand and went out of the big gate, and that was the last they ever saw or heard of them.” How my heart beat, and my whole body, hot then cold, trembled, as he told this. He remarked, “This is all I know, and I am afraid it will not be of much use to you, and now I want you to stay and take dinner with me.” So considerate he was, and kindly, just like a Frenchman, as I had read of them. I thanked him, but said that I must take the next train for home. He urged me to come again and see him, just as the French do. I took my departure. Dine! Take dinner! I felt as if I never wanted to eat again. I had rather gone to death. I wandered towards the railway station. I almost cursed my insatiable curiosity for leading me to that wretched place, of which I always had such a dread of seeing. We can see evil enough, and misery to the full, as we pass along, without rummaging around to find it. I had taken the bit in my teeth in spite of my reason, of my good sense, and I was wilfully making my own evil destiny. We are all mostly fools at times, and most of us all the time. I was bewildered, weary, sick in my very soul. I tried to think of other things, but the black nightmare that had come, would not away. “What next? What next?” some coco demon kept torturing me in asking. I had so much of the past, not of the remote, but of the recent past, to think of, rather to feel, that I could take no thought of the future. I was in a condition of a traveler, who, after a toilsome journey of months comes to an immense stream, where there is neither bridge, nor boats, nor ferryman. He can neither retrace his steps, or go forward, and sits down in abject despair. I reached home, and hardly knew how I passed the next few days.