The remaining occupants of the room stand with sad looks; they are all women but one, a middle-aged man.  They do not feel the occasion except so far as there is a certain solemnity connected with it.  Silent and grave, they watch a process going on whose real nature they cannot understand except as a momentous and appalling change.  Change is only transformation, not annihilation.

Say Koitza has been lying thus for several days.  The end is near at hand, and yet hours may elapse ere she dies.  So still it is in the apartment that nobody dares even move.  Rising and falling come the song and the noise of the dance from the outside, but they seem to halt at the little opening, as if an invisible medium would interpose itself, saying, “Stay out, for within there ripens a fruit for another and a better world.”

Mitsha glides over to the young man with the dark, streaming hair and touches his arm lightly.  He looks up and at her.  It is Okoya,—­Okoya, whom we believed to be dead, but who stands here by the side of his dying mother.  He also looks emaciated and wan.  After all the dangers and misery of a protracted flight this hour has come upon him.  The eyes of the two meet; their looks express neither tenderness nor passion, but a perfect understanding that betokens a union which even death cannot destroy.  It is that simple, natural attachment which forms the basis of Indian wedlock when the parties are congenial to each other.

That the two are one can be plainly seen.  As yet no outward sanction has been given to their union; but they are tacitly regarded as belonging to each other, and no opposition is offered to an intimacy which lacks but the bond of marriage.  Passion has little to do with that intimacy; the severe trials of the past have riveted them together on a higher plane.

Mitsha has made a sign to the young man.  Both steal from the chamber noiselessly and climb to the roof.  He goes first and she follows, as is customary among Indians.  Once up there the dance attracts Okoya’s attention for a moment.  He has not seen anything of it as yet, for all day he has remained by his mother’s side.

Shyuote improves the opportunity to slip out also.  As he sees his brother and future sister-in-law go out, he follows.  Why should he stay down any longer?  His mother is well.  She sleeps soundly and breathes so loud!  She certainly is improving, and up there he can see Koshare.  But he is careful not to let Mitsha see him; her positive ways are distasteful, so he creeps in among the spectators where her eyes cannot follow and soon has lost sight of everything in contemplation of the Koshare.

The appearance of Okoya and Mitsha on the roof attracts no attention.  As long as the death-wail is not sounded, none but those of her clan have a right to be with the dying.  Still one or other of the women casts an inquisitive glance at Mitsha; a slight shake of her head is sufficient answer to them.  The young pair go to one side; he sits down on the parapet of the roof and she beside him.  Their eyes follow the dance, but their thoughts are elsewhere.  Okoya whispers at last, “Sanaya is dying.”