But Makarandika shrank from the glance that he cast upon her, exactly as
if he had struck her in the face with his clenched hand. And she turned
suddenly white, as if the marble floor she sat on had claimed her for
its own. And all at once she fell forward, and remained, crouching, with
her face upon her hands, like a feminine incarnation of Rati when she
saw Love's body burned to ash. And time passed, while the moon looked
down at her as if with pity, wondering at her stillness, and saying as
it were in silence: Can it be that she is dead? And then, suddenly,
Arunodaya laughed aloud in his sleep, and he murmured, as if with
affection: Sarojini, Sarojini.
And then, Makarandika looked up quickly. And lo! there came over her a
smile, like that of one suddenly rejoicing at the arrival of unexpected
opportunity. And all at once she stood erect, as if all her agony had
been changed in a moment to resolution. And she looked down at him as he
slept, and she said, very slowly: Ah! lover of Sarojini, dost thou leave
me, as it were, spurned from thee with aversion, alone on the roof of
thy palace, to spend thy time with her? What! shall the wife of this
birth sit, weeping as it were outside the door, while she embraces thee
within? Ah! but thou hast forgotten, that if I cannot enter, at least I
can interrupt thee, since I am mistress of the dream.
And she put her hands up to her head, and undid the knot of her braided
hair. And she took from it, as it fell around her, as if to shroud her
action in the darkness of a cloud, a long thin dagger,[43] that
resembled a crystal splinter of lightning picked up on a mountain peak,
and shone in the moon's rays like a streak of the essence of vengeance
made visible to the eye. And she went close up to him, and remained
standing silent, watching his face turned upwards as he lay before her,
with a smile on her lips that resembled the gleam of her own dagger, as
it waited in her trembling hand.
[Footnote 43: "Did not Windumati slay Widuratha the Wrishni with a
stiletto that she had hidden in her hair?" (_Harsha charita_).]