"Prem! Say thou art not dead--say only that, Prem!" she moaned.
Her voice seemed to reach him on the far edge of the great Blank, for his eyelids quivered. Then, for one moment, he looked at her, and there was appeal in his eyes.
"Wife--Veru--my----" It was scarcely a whisper, but she heard it, and with a cry of joy, she caught him in her strong arms, laid him on the ground, and, tearing his cloth aside, sought for the wound. Finding it, her lips were on it in a second. Ah! could kisses draw the poison, surely her frantic love must avail.
But no. His eyelids closed. There was no sound, only a little quiver that she felt through her lips. Then his beauty lay still beneath them.
After a time she drew herself away from him, and laid his head upon her lap. So she sat, dazed, thinking of that jasmine wreath in the dust, and of that half-heard whisper--
"Wife--Veru--my----" My--what?
* * * * *
"And there is none to come after him," said the village worthies, when the fire of Prema's burning had died down to smouldering embers, and the oldest man of his clan in the village had performed the rites which should have been the duty of a son.
And then they shook their heads wisely, thinking that men of Prem Singh's kind ran an ill risk in the next world without a son to perform the funeral obsequies; especially, nowadays, when the law prevented a dutiful wife from ensuring her husband's safety and salvation by burning herself on his funeral pyre. Yea! it was an ill world indeed in which the fostered virtue of a woman you had cared for and cossetted might not avail to save the man she loved from the pains of purgatory. And then they drifted away, full of surmise and deep desire concerning the headship of the village. Mai Sarsuti could not hold it as a widow, though she could hold the land; and there were no relations--none. So the coast was clear for many claims.
Sarsuti meanwhile had not clamoured--as many an Indian widow does even nowadays--to be allowed to sacrifice herself for her husband's salvation. She had scarcely wept. She had, on the contrary, spoken sternly to Veru, bidding her keep her foolish tears until all things had been done in due order to keep away the evil spirits and ensure peace to the departed.