Her hands, hot with the fever of the soul, pleaded for her, clasping his. Her dark eyes heavy with tears entreated mercy. He answered gravely:
“I go to my own people.”
“And we are not your own people? Beloved, beloved—Your words are swords, who then are your own?”
“I cannot tell.”
Her hope forgotten, the Princess knelt beside him.
“O noble one, is it life or death that draws you?”
“I cannot tell. What is death? But life such as this is weariness inexpressible, and how men endure it I cannot know. Without change, break, or ripple the sunshiny days glide past, each bringing in its hands the same offering of love and peace monotonous as a dove’s cooing. My life is without hope, for, having all, what is there to hope for? And what I have is over-sweet. It cloys in the tasting like honey. And the Brahmans make their sacrifices and mutter their mantras of invocation and propitiation, and for what? For if we have all, what more is there to have, and why pray for what is unneeded? If this Paradise over-sweet can never crack asunder; if ages and ages hence we still shall sit here young and beautiful as to-day,—the Gods have emptied their hands and what have they left to give? And if we do amiss, how shall they punish us? And will not the day come when I may lift up my hand to the mountains and curse them, saying—‘Be at ease in your careless heavens, O unapproachable Gods,—but I am a man with a soul not to be captured and tamed in earth’s paddock. I demand my rights, though what they are I know not, for I move in a perfumed cloud that blinds me. But I shall know one day.’ ”
She looked up at him in fear that forbade speech.
“I hear the noise of hammers outside the gardens, the cry of the plougher, the song of the maids who come home with cattle from the outer meadows. And I say that these people have lives better than mine, and if I could change I would, for sweet must be their sleep and glad their leisure, but for me life is all idleness and sleep, and their eternity is better than my own. I will ask my father to let me too go out and labour in the glad world outside this prison, that buys its food with happy toil, that I too may know what it is to eat the bread I have earned in contentment.”
Pale with fear Yashodara answered: