“Yes, you are right.  It is not a very long story, and I suppose I had better begin at the beginning.  You remember well my being rescued by an English gentleman, a Mr. John Darrow.  I afterward became well acquainted,—­in fact we were to be married.  To this union my parents strongly objected.  They had promised me to Rama Ragobah, and were horrified at my seeking to outrage the laws of caste by bestowing my hand not only outside of my station but upon a foreigner and Christian as well.  This had only the effect of causing me to meet the Sahib secretly.  We chose for our meeting-place the great banyan on the top of Malabar Hill, where I passed the happiest moments I have ever known.  Everything went well until the night on which we had planned to run away.  We were to meet at the usual place and hour, take the night train for Matheron Station, and there be married.

“My heart bounded with joy as I climbed Malabar Hill on that fatal evening, but my delight was of short duration.  In my fear lest I should keep my lover waiting I must have arrived fully fifteen minutes before the appointed time.  I was standing with my back against the banyan tree, awaiting the first sound of his approach, when my attention was attracted by what seemed to be two little balls of fire shining from a clump of bushes almost directly in front of me.  They seemed to burn with a lurid and wicked glare, and, as my gaze became entangled by them, a tremor ran through my frame and a cold sweat bathed my entire body.  Overcome by an unspeakable dread I made one last frantic effort to withdraw my eyes, but could not.  Then gradually, by slow degrees, my terror was succeeded by an over-whelming fascination.  I felt myself drawn irresistibly toward the thicket.  Then came a vague sense of falling, falling, falling, and I knew no more, at least for some little time.

“The next thing I remember is seeing my lover stretch out his arms to me, while I was inspired with an unaccountable hatred of him so bitter that it left me mute and transfixed.  Then he sought to embrace me, and I threw a young cobra, which, coiled in a wicker basket, had been placed in my hand, full in his face.  I think, also, that I struck him, and then ran down the hill and straight to the house of Ragobah.  What happened during the next few months I know not.  I seemed to have been in a continual sleep full of dreams.  When I awoke I seemed conscious that I had dreamt, but could not tell of what.  You can imagine my horror, my despair, when I was first addressed as Ragobah’s wife.  I denied the relation, but everyone told me the same story—­I was Ragobah Sahibah.  This shock, coming as it did with the memory of my conduct that terrible night on Malabar Hill, nearly killed me, and was followed by another long period of the dream existence.  I began to think I was a sufferer from some terrible brain disease, and to doubt which was my real existence, the dreams or the waking moments.