Shortly before his marriage the boy went to worship in the great temple near the sea. He had heard of its sanctity all his life, and as a little lad had often gone with his parents on pilgrimage there, but now he went to worship. He took his offering and went. He went again and again. All that he saw there was religion, all that he did was religious. Could there be harm in it? He was married; his little bride went with him trustfully. She knew more of him than most Indian brides know of their husbands. She had heard he was loving, and she thought he would be kind to her. A year or two passed, and the child's face had a look in it which even the careless saw, but she never spoke about anything to give them the clue to it. She went to stay in her father's house for a few weeks, and they saw the change, but she would not speak even to them. Then things got worse. The girl grew thin, and the neighbours talked, and the father heard and understood; and, to save a scandal, he took them away from the town where they lived, and made every effort to give them another start in a place where they were not known. But the coils of that snake of deified sin had twisted round the boy, body and soul; he could not escape from it. They moved again to another town; it followed him there, for a temple was there, and a temple means _that_. Then the devil of cruelty seized upon him; he would drink, a disgraceful thing in his Caste, and then hold his little wife down on the floor, and stuff a bit of cloth into her mouth, and beat her, and kick her, and trample upon her, and tear the jewels out of her ears. The neighbours saw it, and told. Then he refused to bring money to her, and she slowly starved, quite silent still, till at last hunger broke down her resolute will, and she begged the neighbours for rice. And he did more, but it cannot be told. How often one stops in writing home-letters. _The whole truth can never be told._ She is only a girl yet, in years at least; in suffering, oh, how old she is! Not half is known, for she never speaks; loyal and true to him through it all. We only know what the neighbours know, and what her silent dark eyes tell, and the little thin face and hands. She was very weary and ill to-day, but she would not own it, brave little soul! I could see that neuralgia was racking her head, and every limb trembled when she stood up; but what made it so pathetic to me was the silence with which she bore it all. I have only seen her once before, and now she is going far away with her husband to another town, and I may not see her again. She was too tired to listen much, and she knows so little, not nearly enough to rest her soul upon. She cannot read, so it is useless to write to her. She is going away quite out of our reach; thank God, not out of His.