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 into Imtiazan’s heart; and when the door opened and she was met by three elderly Muhammadans who saluted her as their “Bai-Saheb,” fear took possession of her soul.  The thin red cases hanging on the wall told her that the men were musicians; and in response to the mute appeal in her eyes her husband bade her with almost brutal candour prepare to adopt her old profession of dancing and singing in order to save him from the hateful duties of a public letter-writer.

For two days Imtiazan tended by the musicians and their wives was a prey to the blackest despair, and then deeming it useless to protest, she set herself courageously to do her husband’s bidding and to dance as she had danced in the house of Gowhar Jan.  But she little knew the true depths of her husband’s selfishness.  “Money comes not fast enough” was his perpetual cry and he urged her, at first gently but with ever-increasing vehemence, to sink still lower.  The memory of the past and who knows what higher instinct helped her to withstand his sordid demands for many days; but at length, realizing that this was kismet and tired of the perpetual upbraiding, she consented to do his bidding.  So for three weary years the waters closed over Imtiazan.  One day she awoke to find that her husband had crowned his villainy by decamping with her valuables and all her savings.  She followed and found him, and, pressing into his hand a little extra money that he had in his hurry overlooked, she bade him a bitter farewell for ever.  She rested a day or two to get herself properly divorced from him, and then returned alone to the hated life in Bombay.