'He comes in fall — and he comes in spring at the April full moon. You know that night-when I can hear the music of the Hindu Saturnalia? He used to bring men with picks, at first, to tear down my wall.'

After a silence I said, 'Farkhanda, did it never occur to you that any one might have torn that shrine of yours brick from brick, and no one could have heard you, to help. He might have done that.'

'He might not have,' she exclaimed. 'He did n't dare.'

'Well, I'm glad you were n't afraid, anyway,' I continued.

'Afraid!' she exclaimed. 'I've been consumed with fear.'

She stretched out an arm to show me how thin it still was.

'Unless it had been God's will that I should live, I would have died every day that first winter.'

'But why?' I asked. 'Churails,' she replied. 'Ghosts of women who die pregnant. A man died of fear when he met one in that mango grove, once when I was a little girl. I had forgotten it. But when the darkness fell that first night, I remembered, suddenly. I had no charm. Some people get a hair from one of them their hairs are all living, like snakes. Their long teeth hang out. Their feet are on backward, heels first. If you get a hair, and sew it into a little slit above your knee, they can't hurt you. One looked in at me that night, green eyes in the dark. I ran around the shrine, feeling for the door, screaming for some one to let me out. But away off in the town, every one was asleep. - Every night I resolved to get out in the morning. After bodies are buried, jackals come

'But you never called,' I reminded her.

'In the morning I'd hear them laughing as they passed. "Can a conjuri give up her way of living?" one asked, those first days. And the other answered, "Can a woman stop breathing?" So then I stopped breathing. I had my rope to kiss. I would not leave. Anyway, I used to remember what you said when I asked you why the evil eye could not fall upon babies in the hospital. You said that if you did n't fear churails and evil eyes, they could n't touch you. You said if any one laughed at them, they ran away. You told me that you walked at twilight once through a wide dark desert place, she used such a lovely Panjabi word to make one see the dark and the solitude and the distance, and you saw a little way off an evil spirit. And when you were not afraid, but walked right up to it, it turned into a man carrying a bundle of grass on his head.'

-

'I did n't say that,' I expostulated. 'Yes, you did. I remembered. I used to try to laugh. But it sounded like crying. I could never deceive them.'

'Farkhanda!' I cried. "That was a straying donkey, or a cow, or goat, that looked in on you.'

She interrupted me, entirely unconvinced.

'Oh, well, anyway, I'm not so afraid now. I've got over that. And I had my dogs.'

'Dogs?' I questioned, knowing that Moslems consider dogs unclean.

"Two conjuris brought a little childdog out to me by night, when they came out to pray · they were so sorry

for my loneliness. They thought I was too proud to take a gift from them, so very quietly they put her in at the little hole through which I sweep my shrine out. I called out after them, "Sisters, the Lord show you kindness!" I cried the night the puppy came all night.'

'You must often have cried, I should think,' I said.

'No, I did n't. I never cried except that night when I touched her. She was so warm and soft and little. I had n't touched anything living for three years then.'

'I'm glad you had her for company.' 'I did n't. She got too big to crawl in and out of the hole. Once she got stuck, and cried like a child. Then I put the water-jar in front of the hole, so she could never get in again.'

'Why did n't you keep her inside with you?' I asked.

'She had no mate in there,' she answered.

When I began begging her not to go back, she said rather sharply, 'You don't know what you're saying. You make me want my rope to kiss. If I did n't go back, I'd be in Lahore again in a week.'

Mighty convenient thing, a locked shrine, I thought. Every one ought to have one.

'And besides,' she continued, 'a Hindu fakir sat under the banyan tree by the pond for eleven years, not far from my shrine. He had torn out his tongue, and every two minutes he roared like a bull. He had great fame.

to come, and had my shrine opened, and his servants carried me to the train. It was an honor for him. Next week he comes to take me back.'

She was speaking with complacency, with satisfaction, with something that seemed like anticipation. There was no use in my arguing, absolutely none.

'Farkhanda,' I said, and I felt like crying, 'I'm sure I'll never wake up again in my warm bed at night and listen to the tempests of rain roaring through our trees, without thinking miserably of you out there alone on the cold stones. Don't go back to fasting.'

'Now for that,' she answered, 'may the Lord reward you! When I can't sleep in my shrine, I shall pray for you. The Lord be her thick veil, the Lord be her thick veil, God shield her from all men's eyes, I shall pray. Twelve years at least I must pray there. Twelve years will be enough-and as much after as God wishes. I tell you, I am very glad to be living to go back, child."

At the time it seemed natural that she should call me 'child.' But later, when the doctor and I reckoned up the years, I remembered that she was thirty-four. I was ten years older.