Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/80

 she wishes to let them go in the water, and yet she is afraid they will stray out of her reach, and as she stoops, with the river-side grass glistening bright at her feet and the morning light playing upon her form, the dramatic moment arrives when Kanti, the hero of the tale, catches sight of her. "The girl's beauty was extremely fresh, as if the artificer of the world had just set her down after modelling her. It was hard to tell her age; her form was womanly, yet her face had a childish immaturity that no experience of the world seemed even to have touched. The news of her crossing the mysterious confines between childhood and youth did not yet seem to have reached her own consciousness."

The vision brings the life of Kanti, as it does the day itself, to a climax. He goes to her father with the abruptness that one often finds in romance, and makes formal proposals for the girl with the ducklings; and the father, who is a Brahmin, says he will gladly see his daughter—whom he names Shudha—betrothed, as she is growing in years. All goes on well until the wedding-day. In India, we must remember, bride and bridegroom do not actually meet until the day when the exchange of the "look