He gazed all round, hiding himself among the leaves. He sat on a branch and
looked below. He beheld a female figure seated on that platform, blindingly beautiful and
divinely pure.
Thin and pale, she shone like the streak of
the moon in the beginning of the bright half of the month. Her beauty glowed fitfully
through deepest dejection like flame through enveloping smoke. Wrapped in a soiled upper
garment she resembled a lovely lotus obscured by miry moss. Her face was bathed in tears,
and she was wan and thin for want of food. She had no thoughts but of sorrow, no
glimpse of friends or hope. There were only Raakshasis wherever she turned her eyes, and
she felt like a doe which had lost its herd and found itself beset by a pack of wild dogs.
|
