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“Isn’t that good news, Sara?” her father asked.

“Perhaps the children there won’t like me,” Sara said.

“It is not good news, Father,” Livy said. Entire awareness was implicit in her voice and her furious dark eyes were fixed upon his face.

“It isn’t good news, Father,” Sara echoed, clinging to Livy’s waist. “If Livy doesn’t think so, I don’t think so.”

“Nevertheless, we are going,” the father said, “and we shall stay for a year, except Livy, who will stay four whole years, because she is going to college. She will go to college and learn to be an American girl, and grow into an American woman. And maybe she will marry an American man and stay in America.”

“Oh, no, no,” Sara cried, “for then how can she live with us in Vhai?”

“Perhaps then she will not want to live in Vhai,” the father said. “America is a wonderful country, there are wide roads and cars and great trains, even airplanes flying everywhere. Livy will have pretty clothes, and she will learn to sing and play the piano, and in the summer she may go to England and to France.”

“Let me get up, please, Sara,” Livy said. She tugged at the arms about her waist.

Ted did not stop her or ask her where she was going. He had dealt the blow and he must let her take it as she could.

“Come and sit on my lap, Sara,” he said, ignoring Livy. “I will tell you more about America.”

The little girl loosened her clutch upon her sister’s waist, and diverted by the invitation, she went to her father. In the darkness, lit only by the glow falling through the open doors and windows as servants went about lighting the lamps in the house, he told her about America, the endless mountains and the long rivers, the great cities and the house where her grandfather lived, and before that her great-grandfather, whom she had never seen, who now was dead.

“America is your country, you know,” he told her. “India is not your real country, and Vhai is not your own place, not really, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Sara said in wonder, “I always thought it was.”

He fell silent when she said this, smitten like Peter of old, by conviction of betrayal at night, while his heart reproached him and he heard the wailing music of Vhai winding up from the streets now hidden by darkness.

In the dark Livy was walking with swift and reckless steps, heedless of the snakes and the night insects, the folds of her sari gathered in her hand and over her head the scarf which hid her bent profile. At this hour Jatin would be in his room next to the clinic, the little lean-to which her father had built for him when he came to be the resident doctor for the Vhai hospital. She had never been in his rooms except the day they were finished, before he moved in, when with her parents they had inspected the place for his coming. There were four rooms, enough for his family when he married, for, of course, he would marry, her father said, and four rooms would be spacious here in Vhai. And four rooms would be spacious for her, too, she could have made a home there with Jatin, she had dreamed of it, she had even talked of it, though he would never listen.

“It will never happen — never can it be so,” Jatin had said again and again.

“Jatin, you are always discouraged,” she had cried. “You must be bold, you must insist! If I want something very much I always insist.”

To this Jatin had replied only with dark sad looks. His eyes, tragic in their shape and color, large and liquid, the lashes long and thick, carried in their shadows the memory of unknown sorrows, a deep racial grief which he had inherited and now possessed as his own nature. He was always sure that the worst would happen, he would not lift a hand against fate for he could not believe in happiness and he accepted disappointment before it fell.

Oh, tonight, she told herself, he must be made to understand, tonight he must be made to see clearly that a man seizes his own, he holds it fast, and she was his. Her feet scarcely touched the grass as she ran, winged with fear as well as love, fear of death and fear of life. What if a snake bit her, and what if Jatin did not have the courage? He loved her, that she knew, for he was deep-hearted and passionate, yet even love might not make him strong enough. He gave up too easily, small wishes and great longings alike he surrendered quickly if he were opposed. Tonight she would insist, yes, she was the one to insist.

She ran up the three steps of the small veranda outside the four rooms. The light burned within, the mellow light of his oil lamp, and she knocked at the open door. He sat in his study and she could not see him, but the light fell in a bar upon the floor of the little entrance hall. He heard the knock and came out at once, barefoot, wearing a sleeveless singlet and dhoti, expecting no one at this hour, unless a call from the hospital.

“Livy,” he cried softly in a voice of horror. “Why are you here?”

“Let me in, Jatin,” she said. The screen door was hooked and she shook it slightly.

He unhooked it and she slipped inside.

“I must put out the light,” he whispered. His face was anxious. “They will see you — perhaps someone has already seen you.”

“For that I don’t care,” she said in her natural voice. “Don’t whisper, Jatin — what does it matter who knows, now that my parents know?”

Yet he was uneasy and he stood, hesitating.

“Very well, then,” she said. “We will just sit here in the hall in the shadow. I will not stay, Jatin, since you are so afraid. But I had to tell you. Father has sent for steamship tickets. We are going to America and he will not allow me to come back. A year, Jatin — they will stay a year, but I must stay four! And how could I come back to Vhai if he will not let me? So you must demand me in marriage, Jatin — or we must be married secretly if they will not let us marry openly.”

“How is it possible for us to be married secretly?” he asked, his voice agitated by his distress. “We would have to go to the American Consulate in Poona, and there your father and your grandfather are well known. The Consul would tell them before he gave us the permission. There is no way. We must give each other up.”

She bit her lips and turned away her face. “I knew you would say that. I knew you would not have the courage. I don’t know why I love you.”

“Nor I,” he said humbly.

In misery they sat side by side on a stiff little rattan settle, the bar of light falling like a curtain between them and the open door. They faced the door and he stared into the shadowy night, piercing the darkness to search for hidden figures, for eavesdroppers and prowlers. Nothing was hidden in Vhai, nothing was secret. Of course the people knew, but never before had she come to his rooms. Yet his easily roused blood quickened and grew warm. She was sitting close to him, her slender thigh pressed against his leg, bare under the cotton dhoti. She was silent, a graceful drooping shape beside him, and he reached for her hand and took it between his and stroked it gently in long soft movements, palm against his palm, his fingers stroking between hers. She drooped toward him, and he put his arm about her waist. Love could be denied, yes, but sometimes it was uncontrollable. Here in the night, with everything forbidden them, love itself was uncontrollable. Nobody had seen her come and none need see her go. The night was growing late. He could put out the light and the house would be dark. No servant slept in the house, and if a message came from the hospital, he would have to go to the door, but there was also the back door, the one that led from his bathing room, where the gardener carried the water in and out, and she could slip away from there. The gods of Vhai would protect her from serpents and insects, and she could flee across the lawn again.