ollection in the morning: since thy sleep will be a long one, and
thou wilt never wake again. And all the evil dreams have vanished with
their author, never to return; and now once more Aranyani is herself,
only differing in this, that she is dead. Aye! it was better to be dead:
and my blow has blotted out all the bitterness and shame. And thou didst
await it, so bravely: and yet, hadst thou known, it was not thy death
only, but mine, for which thou wert asking, thou wouldst have shrunk, it
may be, from the blow, which, as it was, thou wert only too joyful to
receive. And now very soon, I shall follow thee, by a second blow, far
easier to give; for to give thee thine was very hard; so hard, that it
hurt my heart a hundred times as much as thine. But in the meanwhile, we
will sit together in the moonlight, just for a very little while, and
talk, as of old. Only thou canst not tell me stories, and call me Bruin,
any more. Thou didst give thyself, alive, to others: but thou art mine,
now that thou art dead: and that is enough. And this is, as it were, my
marriage night. And think not that I bear thee any grudge, for the words
spoken at random in thy madness, or even for the blow; for that is
nothing, from such a little hand as thine. Come, let me see it, for
maybe it hurt itself more than it hurt me. Ha! dost thou remember the
very story that thou didst tell me thyself, about the sage? And now, who
knows better than myself, that a blow hurts the giver more than the
receiver? For no one ever hurt himself so much as I did, when I gave
thee thy blow. It was not to return blow for blow, that I gave it. Ah!
it is not thou, against whom I bear a grudge, for all thy words and thy
little irritable blow; but it is thy vile lover and his viler
instrument, who have ruined thee, and brought about thy death.

And then, all at once, he uttered an exclamation. And he stopped short,
and set her down upon the ground, and stood up. For suddenly, as if for
the very first time, the injury done to her by Atirupa and his follower
rose up, and took him as it were by the throat.

And as he stood thinking, all at once he began to tremble unawares, with
rage. And he exclaimed: Aha! Atirupa, I have remembered, and only just
in time: I am not dead yet. And he looked down at Aranyani, as she lay.
And he said: Aranyani, forgive me! Well didst thou call me fool. For I
came within an ace of following thee into the other world, leaving thee
unavenged. But