192 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
grievous/’ she said, “ to behold the misery to which 
he was already reduced by her — to see in him the 
freshness of youth and health prematurely blighted — 
to see it succeeded by the shrunken aspect of age 
and the morbid hue of disease — to behold a man 
green in years withered before his prime, and totter- 
ing with apparent decrepitude.” 
She turned from the benevolent and forgiving saint 
with a heavy sigh, having previously bent before him 
to the earth, which she touched with her forehead in 
token of the deepest humiliation. He did not arrest 
her departure, but assured her that he should be pre- 
sent to witness her fortitude on the morrow. When 
left alone to his reflections, which had for more than 
two years been characterised by the greatest austerity, 
his mind reverted with a severe pang to the days 
when the bright sunbeam danced in his path, 
and the warm pulses of joy elated his heart. The 
late meeting with her who had once been the mag- 
netic pivot upon which all his happiness turned, had 
thawed his frozen sympathies, opened the long-closed 
sluices of emotion, and overflowed his bosom with 
such a flood of tender reminiscences, that the austerity 
of the devotee was merged in the feelings of the hus- 
band, and the longings of former enjoyment began to 
take possession of his soul. The idea of having that 
revived hope which had just begun to kindle .within 
him, to invest him as it were with new life, and fur- 
nish him with perceptions of happiness undiscovered 
until now, strangled at the instant of its birth, was a 
reflection to the last degree agonising. He threw 
himself upon the bare earth and wept. 
