No! It had gone. She was the Châran now! and the edge of the death-dagger was keen enough for woman's flesh; she might yet join the great and noble company of the self-immolated.
Her heart stirred in her at the thought of their deeds enshrined in old bardic verses that had been handed down from father to son from generation to generation.
They were in her keeping now at any rate, and she must not forget them.
So, half-kneeling by the low parapet, her chin resting upon her crossed arms, she said them over to herself rough, rude, almost unintelligible, yet still instinct with fire, with courage, with defiance.
She lingered lovingly over one: that tale of how the young ten-year-old Heera when his father was treacherously slain and his master falsely accused of high treason to his suzerain, was sent forth by his mother to seek his father's body in the wilds, and having found it, to take the death-dagger from the bleeding corpse, and so, all travel-stained and weary, his young face blistered with tears, to appear before the hasty tribunal and give the champion's cry--
It is a lie!
I, Heera, I
I take the lie!
Ye Bright-Ones see me die!
Avenge the lie!
And thus by his death force upon the conspirators a full inquiry. So she knelt dreaming, her chin upon her hand while the glow of the set sun faded from the sky.
Yet with all her dreaming she was very woman, and in every fibre of her being she still felt the touch of the King's hands upon hers.
Such hungry hands! Dimly, in her sexless soul, she recognised that quality in them. What did they want? Not womanhood certainly. But who wanted that? No one. Motherhood was one thing and widowhood was another, but sexual womanhood was nescience.
With a sigh she rose to fetch her Dharm-shastra and read her nightly portion from its pages, choosing it at random, so many slokas this way or that way from the one on which her eye fell first. Yet despite this superstitious selection, she was learned beyond the learning of most women, beyond even that of many learned men, for her father had taught her as he taught his sons--all save the Sacred Text, that privilege of Brahmanhood. The limitation, however, left Âtma smiling, since her widowhood outweighed for her the repetition of many gayatris.