“If this hides reluctance!” Nilkant Rai began sternly. “If you have given a foul belief to any tale of the Temple——”
“I, holy Sir! I have heard nothing. What should I hear?” The old man’s voice was feeble with fear. “Do I disparage the honour? Sri Krishna forbid! No, it is but the dread of losing her—the empty, empty house!”
“And is she not at the age when marriage becomes a duty, and would she not leave you then? Unreasonable old man!”
“Holy Sir—Maharaj, I tremble before the honour. But if the girl married, she would bring her babe and make her boast and gladden our hearts. But thus she is lost to us. Have pity! There are other Brahmans rich in daughters. Take not the one from my poverty.”
Nilkant Rai rose to his feet with majesty.
“I go. Never shall the God be rejected and ask twice. But when your daughter, old and haggard, looks up at you, answer that it was her unworthy father who kept her as a drudge on earth, when he might have raised her to a throne in heaven.”
As the old man stood with clasped hands, Radha broke from the shadows and threw herself before him.
“My father, would you hold me back? What joy, what glory in all the world can befall your child like this? The bride of the God! O Father!”
The tears were running down her face like rain. They glittered in the lamplight. He could not meet her eyes. Nilkant Rai stood by, silent.
“She is beautiful as a nymph of Indra’s heaven!” he thought. “Not Urvasi and Menaka, the temptresses of sages, were more lovely!” He said aloud;