es, reading passages here and there. They all seemed to him poor and
trivial--mere words and childish rhymes!

One by one he tore his books to fragments, and threw them into a vessel
containing fire, and said: "To thee, to thee, O my beauty, my fire! Thou
hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were
a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a
trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of
ashes."

The night wore on. Shekhar opened wide his windows. He spread upon
his bed the white flowers that he loved, the jasmines, tuberoses and
chrysanthemums, and brought into his bedroom all the lamps he had in
his house and lighted them. Then mixing with honey the juice of some
poisonous root he drank it and lay down on his bed.

Golden anklets tinkled in the passage outside the door, and a subtle
perfume came into the room with the breeze.

The poet, with his eyes shut, said; "My lady, have you taken pity upon
your servant at last and come to see him?"

The answer came in a sweet voice "My poet, I have come."

Shekhar opened his eyes--and saw before his bed the figure of a woman.

His sight was dim and blurred. And it seemed to him that the image made
of a shadow that he had ever kept throned in the secret shrine of his
heart had come into the outer world in his last moment to gaze upon his
face.

The woman said; "I am the Princess Ajita."

The poet with a great effort sat up on his bed.

The princess whispered into his car: "The king has not done you justice.
It was you who won at the combat, my poet, and I have come to crown you
with the crown of victory."

She took the garland of flowers from her own neck, and put it on his
hair, and the poet fell down upon his bed stricken by death.

ONCE THERE WAS A KING

"Once upon a time there was a king."

When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the
fairy story was. It didn't matter whether he was called Shiladitya or
Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a
seven-year-old boy's heart go thump, thump with delight was this one
sovereign truth; this reality of all realities: "Once there was a king."

But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting.
When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and
suspicious. They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze
and ask: "Which king?"

The story-t