Page:Mashi and Other Stories.djvu/80

72 stood gazing at the darkness. At our feet swirled the dense, black, wild, roaring torrent of death.

Today Surabala has come to my side, leaving the whole world. Today she has none besides me. In our far-off childhood this Surabala had come from some dark primeval realm of mystery, from a life in another orb, and stood by my side on this luminous peopled earth; and today, after a wide span of time, she has left the earth, so full of light and human beings, to stand alone by my side amidst this terrible desolate gloom of Nature's death-convulsion. The stream of birth had flung the tender bud before me, and the flood of death had wafted the same flower, now in full bloom, to me and to none else. One more wave and we shall be swept away from this extreme point of the earth, torn from the stalks on which we now sit apart, and made one in death.

May that wave never come! May Surabala live long and happily, girt round by husband and children, household and kinsfolk! This one night, standing on the brink of Nature's destruction, I have tasted eternal bliss.

The night wore out, the tempest ceased, the flood abated; without a word spoken, Surabala went back