"
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE SIMPLETON AND THE SERPENT.
While in the sleeping--chamber, bathed in a sea of joy, Nagendra and
Surja Mukhi held loving converse, in another apartment of that same
house a fatal dialogue was being held. Before relating it, it is
necessary to record what occurred on the previous night. As we know,
Nagendra had held no converse with Kunda Nandini on his return. In her
own room, with her head on the pillow, Kunda had wept the whole night,
not the easy tears of girlhood, but from a mortal wound. Whosoever in
childhood has in all sincerity delivered the priceless treasure of
her heart to any one, and has in exchange received only neglect, can
imagine the piercing pain of that weeping. "Why have I preserved my
life," she asked herself, "with the desire to see my husband? Now what
happiness remains to be hoped for?" With the dawn sleep came, and in
that sleep, for the second time, a frightful vision. The bright figure
assuming the form of her mother, which she had seen four years before
by her dead father's bedside, now appeared above Kunda's head; but
this time it was not surrounded by a shining halo, it descended upon a
dense cloud ready to fall in rain.
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