Page:The Slave Girl of Agra.djvu/208

 over him. He would drive his chariot over the mangled body of his dearest friend to reach his goal. Nobo Kumar was in the meshes of this terrible man.

Nobo Kumar's disposition, never very equable, underwent a visible change, and became harsh and irritable. His strong determination, which had sustained him through years of trials and misfortunes, were exchanged for nervous and uncertain moods of temper. The clear-sighted woman saw the finer traits of her husband's character effaced one by one; she saw him sinking day by day into a formless mass under the tentacles of a creature whose cold blinking eyes she shuddered to see.

The strongest passion of a woman is a craving for the possession of a man—a sense of ownership towards a husband or a lover, a follower or a friend. She will fatigue herself to death to win a man; she will use all the arts with which Nature has endowed her to keep him secure; she will bear ill-treatment but not estrangement; she can suffer cruelty but not indifference. Nature, or the law of selection, has developed this craving in the woman, as it has provided tendrils to the creeper which must cling in order to live. The rough gnarled tree, round which Nobo Kumar's wife had clung for woe or for weal during a lifetime, was slowly torn away from the tendrils of her heart. Proud woman that she was, she felt a void within her. She looked with silent agony on the worm which had eaten into the vitals of the noble tree, and which she could not crush to the earth with her feet.

One earthly tie was still strong in her. Her daughter had grown to be a lovely girl, with the innocence of Heaven glassed on her face; as a mother she