Page:Krishna Kanta's Will.djvu/153

156 was married at eight years old, and I am now in my seventeenth year. In these nine years I have known nothing but you. I am your cherished one, your doll to play with; what is my fault?"

Gobind.  "Reflect and see."

Bhramar.  "I went home at the wrong time; I have been remiss; I have committed a hundred thousand faults. Forgive me all. I know nothing; I know no one but you. I did it in an angry moment."

Gobind Lâl did not speak. Before him was his wife—that girl of seventeen, with disordered hair, in floods of tears, helpless, miserable, stunned, on the floor at his feet; but he spoke not; he was thinking.

"This one so dark, Rohini so beautiful; this one has virtues, the other beauty. Hitherto I have worshipped virtue, now I will serve beauty. I will spend as I choose this worthless, hopeless, motiveless life of mine; then, when I please, I will destroy this earthly frame."

Bhramar lay, clasping his feet, weeping—"Forgive! forgive—I am but a girl."

He, the infinite, all-pervading dispenser of joys and sorrows, the friend of the distressed,