Page:Durgesa Nandini.djvu/152

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146
DURGESA NANDINI.
146

Can a Rajpoot pay his devotions to such an image any more? Is a Rajput worthy of his race who hesitates with his own hands to tear that image from his mind for ever?

That image has rooted itself deep in the mind of Jagat Singha; and to uproot it is to rend the heart itself. Ah! how shall he banish that lovely image for ever? Is it possible? So long as "memory holds a seat in his distracted globe," so long as flesh and blood remain, so long will that image lord it over his heart and soul.

Not to speak of his mental quiet, these distracted thoughts were fast depriving the Prince of his reason; his memory began to fail. When the night was about to go away, the Prince still sat up supporting his head upon his hands; his brain was reeling; he had lost all power of thinking.

His body ached for having sat long in the same posture; his violent mental agitation had spread fever heat all over his body. He came up to the window.

The cool summer breeze touched his forehead. There was darkness all round; a thin cloud had spread itself in the sky; the stars were not visible; only here and there a mild-gleaming star peeped out from behind a fleeting cloud. The trees at a distance had blended themselves into one another's being in the dark, and stood under the sky like a wall of darkness; the trees close by were glittering with crowns of glow-worms, which shone like so many diamonds. In a tank in front, the image of the trees and the sky appeared indistinct in darkness.

The night breeze which had stolen its coolness from the clouds, somewhat allayed the bodily heat of Jagat Singha. He remained at the window and stood placing his hand over his head. He