Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/77

 came to her. But the Ghât and the folk who frequented it still thought of Kusum as a child. Then, one year, a wandering Sanyasi, a tall young ascetic with a radiant face and a form of great beauty, came to the river, and entered the temple of Siva by the Ghât. Through that shining emissary of the regions promised in the Kusimi was to discern what love and death meant. When he held forth she listened with wonder. She went every day to touch the dust of his feet,—it became her service to gather flowers for the temple and wash its floor with water from the river. But after a time she gives up her pious office and disappears; and when she returns, and the Sanyasi reproaches her, it is clear from her confused replies that her life has become centred in him, and he has become the image of her dreams day and night. Thereupon he says he has one more word to give her: "I leave here to-night, and you must forget me: promise me that!" And she promises and he goes.

Last of all, we see her stand looking at the river, the Ganges, her one friend. "If it were not to take her in its lap now in her trouble, who would?" . . . The Ghât ends the tale: