Anshu spent a restless night. When the water in a pond is disturbed, it stirs up the mud and brings up the weeds from the bottom. So the contact with Marish had brought to the surface the horrible memories from her past. The peace of mind achieved in three years had been shattered in a few seconds.

She asked the maidservant to remove the light from her room, and kept tossing and turning in her bed for a while. She recalled the kind of life she used to lead in the house of Chakradhar, the priest. Lying on the bare stone floor, she would be so sleepy that she did not know where she was. She would wake up only when the mistress shouted for her, or when little Shakul woke up crying. The mistress would scold and curse her for having such sound sleep.

The drumming of rain was so incessant that it dulled all other sounds of the night. Anshu thought, ‘Every drop of rain makes its own little sound as it falls to the earth but taken together, they become just a dull monotone. Even so, each sorrow produces its own pain, but innumerable sorrows, all coming together, incapacitate a person from feeling anything, from experiencing pain.

‘Arya Marish kept me company in silence, as if he was sharing my grief. Why should he feel anything towards me? Hundreds of pleasure seekers come here for entertainment. They are concerned only with that side of my existence, which they see before their eyes. Perhaps Marish had eyes for the inner reality, and could not remain indifferent to what lay hidden behind the appearance.

‘Five years ago, I had found Marish’s remark flippant; his words had filled me with revulsion and disgust. That prophecy of Marish, which was more like a curse than a prediction, has proved only too true. Why do these admirers flock to my mistress’s concert hall? In Sagal, what was the purpose of those grand festivities held in Devi Mallika’s palace? Did the audience come to take pleasure in a woman’s charm, to take in that primeval force of creation in woman? … They come, amuse themselves and go away, but Marish is looking for sorrow in a shop where only entertainment is on sale. It is not entertainment but pain that gives him satisfaction; pain and sympathy in pain … Everything is futile, there is nothing but futility all round …’ And she lay wide awake, lost in the maze of her thoughts, with the rain still pattering away in the darkness.

On the other hand, Marish, who had made a practice of remaining indifferent and unconcerned, felt very disturbed at finding Divya in Ratnaprabha’s palace. He kept tossing and turning in his bed till late in the night. Divya’s face, bereft of hope, overwhelmed with grief, devoid of interest, lingered before his eyes. Divya in her white clothes, looking the very picture of sorrow, sank deep into Marish’s heart. At one moment he would picture her as he saw her on the veranda of Ratnaprabha’s palace. At another, it would be Divya vibrant with life, full of hope and zest, like a newly budding flower, as she used to be in Sagal, in the house of her great-grandfather.