In earlier days Dorama had wondered how Mayita had been able to bear the fate that had overtaken her. She recalled the fact that she had herself shrunk from the baldheaded child, and avoided a meeting without any attempt at disguising her action. And now she was in exactly the same case herself! ah! she could not bear it. It was intolerable; a moan broke from her lips as the reality of the present separated itself from the shadows of the past. She writhed in rebellion against her fate, and as she did so she felt the iron of the inevitable enter her soul. It was unbearable. She could not face it! Cost what it might she must escape! There was but one way. She knew it, as she had heard it spoken of when other women suffered the same fate. Yes: they were right. Death was preferable to life under such conditions. Her beloved husband had sought for death in the well. If she ran quickly, and hurled herself over the low wall before she had time to look into the black cold depths, she could find courage enough to carry out the design without faltering. It would be best too for the house, and relieve it of the disastrous presence of a widow. Royan was gone; Ananda was gone; it was only fitting that she should go too. She rose to her feet determined to act at once before her courage failed her. She turned and staggered blindly to the entrance that admitted the faint starlight of the night. As her foot crossed the threshold she felt a pair of small arms thrown around her. "Dorama! sister, it is I! Coomara's widow! I have come to join my tears with yours!" And promptly Mayita buried her face in the coarse new saree of her sister-widow and gave full rein to her grief. Dorama felt like a drowning waif who had abandoned hope, and to whom was suddenly held out a friendly hand. She clung passionately to Mayita, trembling and catching her breath in dry sobs. "Sit down, sister," said Mayita presently. "Let us talk. No one cares where the widow is, nor what she does. Listen; I have news for you. This morning they put ladders down the well by the cattle shed where your husband's cap was found. They searched for his body with hooks and nets, but they found nothing. If he is there he lies like a stone at the bottom. Some say that as he turned Christian he cannot come up. The devil living in the well has eaten him. My brother laughs and says they are all mistaken. He is not there." "Not there!" cried Dorama startled. Then as the flicker of hope momentarily kindled died down she added: "But if not there, where can he be?" "He has gone to the missionary, the good Englishman, who will be a father to him." "Impossible! He could not stand, far less walk, after the beating that they gave him; and he had no friends."