She steadily refused.

Then a part of the family went to Sleeman's house, ten miles away, and tried again to get him to let her burn herself.

He refused, hoping to save her yet.
All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night she kept her vigil there in the bitter cold.

Thursday morning, in the sight of her relatives, she went through a ceremonial which said more to them than any words could have done; she put on the dhaja (a coarse red turban) and broke her bracelets in pieces.

By these acts she became a dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever.
By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live she could never return to her family.