Page:Kapalkundala (1919).djvu/102

Rh "I must cut off all connections with Agra."

"Why? Alack! I am too much a goose to grasp the situation. Let me have a full significance of to-day's happy tidings."

"The joyful news is that I leave Agra for good."

"Where do you go then?"

"I shall move down and settle in Bengal. If I can, I shall marry a gentleman."

"What a huge joke! I simply shudder at the idea."

"I don't jest. But I am, in all earnest, quitting Agra and have said an revoir to the Badshah."

"What an evil idea has possessed you?"

"Not an evil idea, to be sure! I sauntered through the prime of my life in Agra but what is the result? The thirst for pleasure grew into a passion with me since my childhood. To slake the thirst I left Bengal and came up here. What treasures did I not sacrifice to purchase the trash?—what dark and shady tricks did I stick at?—what ends I strove for were not encompassed? I had a surfeit of all these—wealth, power, glory, fame. But what did these lead to? Sitting, this day here, I can make a mental reckoning of every day as it passed out but I can make bold to say that I neither felt happy for a single day nor enjoyed unalloyed happiness for a single moment. The thirst was never quenched rather it grew and quickened. I can add to my hordes that are reckoned in millions and amass greater fortunes for the mere striving for it. But what for? If the true happiness lay in these, I could have been happy even for a day in all this long Rh