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54 the garner, so passed they away, and were both together gathered to their fathers.

In this story we learn a great deal of the thought of the Greeks about women. We learn that they knew that woman, though usually so much weaker than man, and needing his protection, could yet, in the strength of her love for another, become brave as a lion, and face dangers gladly from which a man might shrink in terror.

In India also, amongst her gentle white-veiled women, with all their silent grace, there is the same courage, the same strength. There also it is known that a timid girl—a very daughter of men, not like Sati or Uma, some divine personage veiled in flesh—though utterly unaccustomed to the touch of the rough world, will become suddenly brave to protect another. The Indian people know that there is no darkness that a true wife will not enter at her husband's side, no hardship she will not undertake, no battle that on his behalf she will not fight. And yet their story of the ideal woman is curiously different from this of Alcestis. Different, and at the same time similar. Only listen, and you shall judge for yourselves.

Beautiful and gifted was the royal maiden, Savitri. And yet, at the mention of her name, the world thought only of her holiness. She had come to her parents as the Spirit of Prayer itself. For the marriage of her father Aswapati and his