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 THE CURSE AT FAREWELL

insult of his praise e (p. 38), his smug assumption of disinterestedness (p. 40), his summing up of the boundless hos- pitality he had received as his long toil in this “City of the Daityas”’ (p. 38), or his last suggestion that he forgives her and wishes her happiness. There is a veiled impudence in his speeches all through, except in that lyrical interchange between him and Debjani, in their reminiscence of -their first meeting—a passage whose great

‘loveliness serves a dramatic purpose, in ‘heightening the betrayal that is to follow ‘and in practically convicting Kach out of ‘his own words. The studied restraint of
 * the two lines with which he takes his

departure are the cruellest stab of all— ‘when the perpetrator of the wrong gives himself such a halo of generous readiness to overlook Debjani’s wild words.

The poem’s weakness will be felt to be 12