Page:Indira and Other Stories.pdf/98

 dwelling in a thatched cottage, and this is the lovely heiress of great possessions. I barely saw the little maid whose voice lingers in my memory. I do not even know whether she was ugly or pretty, and yet. . . .. yet if this beautiful being has only a tithe of that little maid's charm, what a woman for a man to love and waste his life on!

Radharani, on the other hand, drank in the stranger's courteous words. A strange and happy emotion filled her maidenly breast. "Ah!" she thought, "all these pretty things you say about your little friend of yore, it is to you, sir, they should be addressed. And from whence have you come after these eight long years of absence? Have you descended, god-like, from some heavenly paradise? Have you at last been touched by the heart's devotion of your loving servant? Can you be a heavenly being, able to wander unseen into maidens' bowers? Else how is it that you know how secretly, how very secretly and silently my poor heart has worshipped you all these years?"