young girl, who after some hesitation consented to marry him and elope
with him to a distant city. Thus Imtiazan left the house of her girlhood
and fled with her husband to Bombay. Money they had not, where-fore
Imtiazan, not without a pang, sold her necklace of gold beads and
bravely started house-keeping in the one small room they chose as
their home, while he went forth to seek employment worthy of his
degree at the Calcutta University and of his Rohilla ancestry But alas!
work came not to his hands: and as the money slowly dwindled, he grew
morose and irritable and often made her weep silently as she sat stitching
the embroidery designed to provide the daily meal. She knew full well that
vain pride baulked his employment; and after many a struggle she prevailed
upon him to become a letter-writer. "An undergraduate, who has read
Herbert Spencer, Comte and Voltaire," said he, "cannot demean himself to
letter-writing for the public," to which she justly replied that an
education which prevents a man earning his daily bread must be worthless.

So in due course he installed himself with an ill grace upon the footpath
of Bhendi Bazaar with portfolio and inkhorn, writing letters for uneducated
Musulmans, petitions for candidates and English accounts for butlers. And
the more he wrote the more convinced he became that he was sacrificing
himself for a woman who could not realize the measure of his fall. Thus for
a time matters remained--little Imtiazan wearing her delicate fingers out
at home, he plying his pen in the street, until one day a dancing-girl from
Lucknow called him to her house to write an important missive on her
behalf. This chance acquaintance ripened into a friendship that boded no
good for Imtiazan: for within a month, amid specious statements of
lucrative employment and fair promises of future well-being, he bade her
prepare to leave the small room and accompany him to a larger house,
fronting a main thoroughfare, which, said he, would henceforth be their
home. The sight of the unscreened windows of her new home struck a chill