Christina Walshe{244}

AT Kilindir two men loved the same woman. Marania was tall and dark and ge{245}ntle; he had the devotion of a dog; his instinct for self-sacrifice was as great as that of a good woman for the husband she loves. Sobraji, on the other hand, was small and fair and cunning; as a boy he tortured animals, and as a man he tortured his mother and sisters.

The name of the woman was Pabasca. She was very dainty and pretty, and her cheeks were like red poppies seen in the half-light. But she was also very evil.

It was Sobraji whom Pabasca loved, but Sobraji was poor; Marania, on the other hand, owned land and cattle.

“If I am careful,” said Pabasca to herself one evening, as she sat outside her mother’s cottage, “if I am careful, I can have both Sobraji’s love and Marania’s money. It has been done before—I have seen it.”

This thought had lain broodingly in her mind for weeks, but she had spoken of it to no one—not even to Sobraji. And yet if she were to carry her plan into effect, Sobraji was the one man in all the world who must be told.

It was time something was done, for the ardent² love of the two men was wearing her down. Only this morning she had received another of Marania’s strange letters. She could remember some of its phrases.

“Last night I lay awake listening to a nightingale; your voice was in that bird’s throat.... The rushes bending in the wind this afternoon were like your supple³ body.... I sometimes think your soul is in my hands.”

It was impossible not {246}to be pleased by these phrases that her mean little soul could only half understand, but her pleasure was tinged⁴ with contempt.

Sobraji did not make love in that way. He wrote no letters. When he met her at night he whispered amorous⁵ indecencies in her ear which made her laugh and laugh.

Nearly every sentence began with: “How I would like to ...!” and there was no end to the ingenious ways of love his cunning mind devised.

But she had kept her body untouched by both men. Though love was heady and intoxicating⁶, she was too calculating, too distrustful, to give her body: when the time came, her body should be sold. But Sobraji had begun to demand, and Marania to pray for, an answer to the question each had put so many times. It was

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