SURANGAMA.
You are not alone.
SUDARSHANA.
Surangama, I shall not keep anything from you. When he set the palace on fire, I could not be angry with him. A great inward joy set my heart a-flutter all the while. What a stupendous crime! What glorious prowess! It was this courage that made me strong and fired my own spirits. It was this terrible joy that enabled me to leave everything behind me in a moment’s time. But is it all my imagination only? Why is there no sign of his coming anywhere?
SURANGAMA.
He of whom you are thinking did not set fire to the palace-it is the King of Kanchi who did it.
SUDARSHANA.
Coward! But is it possible? So handsome, so bewitching, and yet no manhood in him! Have I deceived myself for the sake of such a worthless creature? O shame! Fie on me! . . . But, Surangama, don’t you think that your King should yet have come to take me back? [SURANGAMA remains silent.] You think I am anxious to go back? Never! Even if the King really came I should not have returned. Not even once did he forbid me to come away, and I found all the doors wide open to let me out! And the stony and dusty road over which I walked—it was nothing to it that a queen was treading on it. It is hard and has no feelings, like your King; the meanest beggar is the same to it as the highest Empress. You are silent! Well, I tell you, your King’s behaviour is—mean, brutal, shameful!
SURANGAMA.
Every one knows that my King is hard and pitiless—no one has ever been able to move him.
SUDARSHANA.
Why do you, then, call him day and night?
SURANGAMA.
May he ever remain hard and relentless like rock—may my tears and prayers never move him! Let my sorrows be ever mine only—and may his glory and victory be for ever!
SUDARSHANA.
Surangama, look! A cloud of dust seems to rise over the eastern horizon across the fields.
SURANGAMA.
Yes, I see it.
SUDARSHANA.
Is that not like the banner of a chariot?