The smile still played on Anshumala’s lips. His grip tightened on her arm. ‘Devi,’ he said, ‘I will return to Sagal only after you have agreed to be my wife, to be the treasure of my family. Your place is that of the mistress of the Acharya household.’

Anshu’s smile remained unchanged. She answered in a soft, steady voice, ‘Arya, the girl Divya, born into the Shaivilya family of Sagal, found herself adrift, either from some quirk of fate or her own errors of judgement, in the current of life which she had not been trained to cross. From those angry waters she emerged as you find her today—a dancer and a courtesan, Anshumala by name. She has lost the purity of her maidenhood also. She is not committed to a Brahmin husband, to one high-born noble; she has now become the property of the community, of all and sundry.’

Rudradhir drew still closer to Anshu, ‘Devi, from a gold mine, iron cannot be extracted. Race and caste are the creations of god, above the power of man. Man is powerless either to give or to take away high caste. The blood of Brahmins flows in your veins. A piece of gold, even if it falls into mud, cannot turn into stone. Rudradhir takes the vow that when he occupies the seat of the Acharya of Sagal, he will take you as his wife.’ And he looked solemnly into the guileless, smiling eyes of Anshu.

‘Your humble servant is grateful to you for your kind sentiments. But such is her character that she does not deserve the honour of being the mistress of a noble family. She has passed through the fire of misfortune and evil days and emerged from it with the marks of ignominy. But for all the shame, she has also passed through the fire to become a free woman. That freedom is what she prizes above everything else.’

‘What are you saying, Devi? You are a Brahmin born,’ Rudradhir’s voice was shaking.

‘Arya,’ Anshumala replied, smiling, ‘the water of a stream, once it overflows and spreads into the fields cannot again return to the limits of its two banks.’

Rudradhir was reduced to speechlessness. Ignoring the stunned expression on his face, Anshumala said with concern, ‘It is getting late. I would not like the Arya to be delayed any further. Besides, it is turning cold. With Arya’s permission, I will ask the attendant to get the chariot ready.’

The two days Rudradhir had intended to stay in Mathurapuri, turned to three-and-a-half-months. He used every stratagem and every kind of argument to convince Anshu that she should return to Sagal as his wife, but she humbly expressed her inability and begged to be excused.

A frustrated and sorely disappointed Rudradhir came to bid farewell, on the eve of his departure for Sagal. His last words to Anshumala were, ‘Devi, you are Brahmin-born. Even today you are supremely pure. I, Brahmin Rudradhir, of the family of the givers of the sacred law, declare that you are entitled to be the mistress of a Brahmin family. Your place is on the throne of my heart. This itself is a proof of your purity. Devi, the verdict given by the Brahmin, whose function is to interpret the law, is in itself a proof. Wait for me, Lakshmi, my goddess of good fortune. One day Rudradhir will come back to fetch you. The light of Sagal must return to shine in Sagal.’