Each was to the other the only helper.
Kunda Nandini was of marriageable age; but she was the staff of her
father's blindness, his only bond to this world. While he lived he
could give her up to no one. "There are but a few more days; if I give
away Kunda where can I abide?" were the old man's thoughts when the
question of giving her in marriage arose in his mind. Had it never
occurred to him to ask himself what would become of Kunda when his
summons came? Now the messenger of death stood at his bedside; he was
about to leave the world; where would Kunda be on the morrow?
The deep, indescribable suffering of this thought expressed itself in
every failing breath. Tears streamed from his eyes, ever restlessly
closing and opening, while at his head sat the thirteen-year-old girl,
like a stone figure, firmly looking into her father's face, covered
with the shadows of death. Forgetting herself, forgetting to think
where she would go on the morrow, she gazed only on the face of her
departing parent. Gradually the old man's utterance became obscure,
the breath left the throat, the eyes lost their light, the suffering
soul obtained release from pain. In that dark place, by that
glimmering lamp, the solitary Kunda Nandini, drawing her father's dead
body on to her lap, remained sitting.
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