Ragunáth grasped her roughly by the arm. “Silence!” he cried. And indeed she was silent, for, even as her tormentor spoke, she saw Bhavani turn and start like a deer in the direction of the palace. And Ahalya knew well to whom he would go first of all.
In a measure relieved, understanding that now she had only to gain time, her wits rose to the situation, and she turned her face to Ragunáth’s frown, and laughed. “Art thou so angry that I have sent the boy away? Wouldst thou have had him stand there gazing at us? Even Radha despatched her maidens ere she let Krishna look upon her face unveiled. Hast thou not heard that tale, my lord?” She smiled on him incomparably.
Ragunáth’s reply was a laugh. He, who trusted no living man, was in an instant thrown off his guard by a woman’s trembling coquetry. “I have heard the tale.—What lover hath not? Yet it hath never been sung to me in the young summer, and by one resembling Radha as thou dost. Sing to me, then, beautiful one, of the loves of Radha and Krishna.”
“But I have neither lute nor harp.”
“It matters not. There is no instrument that would dare accompany thy voice.”
So Ahalya, her heart throbbing with fright, her whole body quivering with loathing of the man who walked so closely at her side, began to sing. And as she sang, the daylight sank from the sky; for the sun had set, and darkness, most terrible to her plight, was upon the land. She sang the eleventh Sarga of the great epic: that of the union of Krishna and Radha, which she had so often poured into the ears of him she delighted to call her god. And even now, at the joyous triumph in the words, her heart was sighing at the emptiness of her love. This, to the music Vasanta and the mode Yati, is what she sang:
“‘Follow, happy Radha, follow,
In the quiet falling twilight,
The steps of him who followed thee
So steadfastly and far—’”