"You must not," he said, "think me greedy. It was not the dinner
that kept me staying on, it was your invitation. If you were to
run away now, that would not be playing fair with your guest."

If he had not said these words with a careless ease, they would
have been out of tune. But, after all, he was such a great
friend of my husband that I was like his sister.

While I was struggling to climb up this high wave of intimacy, my
husband came to the rescue, saying: "Why not come back to us
after you have taken your dinner?"

"But you must give your word," said Sandip Babu, "before we let
you off."

"I will come," said I, with a slight smile.

"Let me tell you," continued Sandip Babu, "why I cannot trust
you. Nikhil has been married these nine years, and all this
while you have eluded me. If you do this again for another nine
years, we shall never meet again."

I took up the spirit of his remark as I dropped my voice to
reply: "Why even then should we not meet?"

"My horoscope tells me I am to die early. None of my forefathers
have survived their thirtieth year. I am now twenty-seven."

He knew this would go home. This time there must have been a