Presently, by chance, she detected the presence of
her husband, and her manner instantly changed.
'Life of my soul! what ails you?' said her lover; 'you are quite dull
to-night.'
'I am dull,' she replied, 'because the lord of my life is gone. Without
my husband the town is a wilderness. Who knows what may befall him, and
whether he will have a nice supper?'
'Trouble thyself no more about the quarrelsome dullard,' said her
gallant.
'Dullard, quotha!' exclaimed the wife. 'What matter what he is, since he
is my all? Knowest thou not--
'Of the wife the lord is jewel, though no gems upon her beam;
Lacking him, she lacks adornment, howsoe'er her jewels gleam?'
Thou, and the like of thee, may serve a whim, as we chew a betel-leaf
and trifle with a flower; but my husband is my master, and can do with
me as he will. My life is wrapped up in him--and when he dies, alas! I
will certainly die too. Is it not plainly said--
'Hairs three-crore, and half-a-crore hairs, on a man so many grow--
And so many years to Swerga shall the true wife surely go?'
And better still is promised; as herein--
'When the faithful wife,[17] embracing tenderly her husband dead,
Mounts the blazing pile beside him, as it were the bridal-bed;
Though his sins were twenty thousand, twenty thousand times o'er-told,
She shall bring his soul to splendor, for her love so large and bold.
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