"No.... No! Iravata," cried she: "do not do so; thy cries seem only to echo my own despair—and I am not willing to give it expression! I smother my grief in my heart, and force back my tears. I am resolved to be a truly Royal maiden, worthy of the long line of ancestors which form in history a brilliant chain, of which I am the last link. But they shall not separate thee from me.... That I will never allow!"
Not separate her from me when she was already so little with me! Ah! why could she not have remained a child, over whom I was permitted to watch?... To be together then was a pleasure for her, as much as for me! While now she was full of thoughts in which I had no part—taken up with amusements in which I counted for nothing. When she was married she would have a Court of her own, and a whole Palace to organize and direct—and what would become of me?
I was ashamed at thinking only of myself, and forgetting her sorrows; but a new feeling which I could not control had been aroused and was raging in me—a fury, and a savage hatred for the stranger who was going to take my Princess away from me.
She forbade me to express my anguish, and it choked me. I had not, myself, any "royal" soul; I owed nothing to my "ancestors." I was only a beast of the forest, taught by my association with men to think, and to suffer; when I suffered I had to cry out; and since my Princess would not permit me to do so in her presence—I rushed away, and went, like a wounded animal, to lie and grieve on my bed in the stable!
[CHAPTER XXI]
JEALOUSY
He appeared one day at the Palace of Golconda—the enemy—the fiancé—whom I had already learned to detest.
When I saw him advancing from a distance, talking and laughing with Parvati, a red flame danced before me, and I closed my eyes to escape from the frenzy of rage which overwhelmed me at the sight of him.
I could hear them coming; the voice of the stranger reached my ears, resounded in them, and pierced them like a sharp arrow! On hearing it I seemed to see once more the bloody battlefield—the corpses crushed under my feet, and my Master in chains, and our perilous flight through the wilderness....