STROVE AGAINST HER WEAKNESS
or the tremor of the voice if a stranger is loving and lovable. Little prattlers crowded round Saibalini whenever she had a few moments to spare at midday or evening, and would pluck her cloth or pull her hair to make her repeat those tales they had heard a hundred times before.
But Saibalini had no more assiduous listener in the vast household than young Hemlata; and no legends fascinated the young wife more than those, with which the Scriptures of India are replete, on the love and faith and duties of women. Was it the unblemished and noble character of her own husband that made Hemlata, so eager to listen to the tales of devoted wives? Or was it a silent and unconscious effort to make herself worthy of her lord and yield him a whole-hearted devotion? Saibalini would yield to her sister's wishes joyfully, and tell her tales of Sita and Savitree and Damayantee, the noblest conceptions of womanhood that the literature of the world has produced.
With her heart panting with a thought which those nearest to her never knew, Hemlatta went to her husband's room when such tales were ended, and approached the bed where he was asleep. She knelt by the unconscious sleeper, and a silent prayer often went up from her heart. "Heaven help me to be a true woman on earth! May I be a true wife in thought and in deed—in life and in death!"
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