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The Curse at Farewell

THE CURSE AT FAREWELL

insult of his praise e (p. 38), his smug assumption of disinterestedness (p. 40), his summing up of the boundless hos- pitality he had received as his long toil in this “City of the Daityas”’ (p. 38), or his last suggestion that he forgives her and wishes her happiness. There is a veiled impudence in his speeches all through, except in that lyrical interchange between him and Debjani, in their reminiscence of -their first meeting—a passage whose great

‘loveliness serves a dramatic purpose, in ‘heightening the betrayal that is to follow ‘and in practically convicting Kach out of ‘his own words. The studied restraint of

the two lines with which he takes his

departure are the cruellest stab of all— ‘when the perpetrator of the wrong gives himself such a halo of generous readiness to overlook Debjani’s wild words.

The poem’s weakness will be felt to be

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