KING OF KANYA KUBJA.
Let it be kept a secret that she is my daughter; otherwise we shall all be in an awful trouble.
MINISTER.
Why do you fear such disaster, Your Highness?
KING OF KANYA KUBJA.
When woman swerves from the right path, then she appears fraught with the direst calamity. You do not know with what deadly fear this daughter of mine has inspired me—she is coming to my home laden with peril and danger.
X
[Inner Apartments of the Palace. SUDARSHANA and SURANGAMA]
SUDARSHANA.
Go away from me, Surangama! A deadly anger rages within me-I cannot bear anybody—it makes me wild to see you so patient and submissive.
SURANGAMA.
Whom are you angry with?
SUDARSHANA.
I do not know; but I wish to see everything destroyed and convulsed in ruin and disaster! I left my place on the throne as the Empress in a moment’s time. Did I lose my all to sweep the dust, to sweat and slave in this dismal hole? Why do the torches of mourning not flare up for me all over the world? Why does not the earth quake and tremble? Is my fall but the unobserved dropping of the puny bean-flower? Is it not more like the fall of a glowing star, whose fiery blazon bursts the heavens asunder?
SURANGAMA.
A mighty forest only smokes and smoulders before it bursts into a conflagration: the time has not come yet.
SUDARSHANA.
I have thrown my queen’s honour and glory to the dust and winds—but is there no human being who will come out to meet my desolate soul here? Alone—oh, I am fearfully, terribly alone!