of one had the gleam of the moon-shine. Her figure was half-concealed amidst her loose dark tresses. The other dark-skinned and of clear-cut features was neither just in nor well out of her gushing sixteen. She was thin and small. Her small ringlets were blown-over the upper half of her tiny face like the petals of a full-blown lotus encircling the cup in the centre. Her eyes were large and of a mild white as of the fish. Her tiny fingers were enmeshed in her companion's flowing mass of curling hair. Our presumption is at par that the reader has recognised the girl with the tint of the silver moon-beam to be our Kapalkundala. We may let him understand, besides, that the dark-complexioned one is her sister-in-law, Shyamasunari.
Shyamasundari was addressing her brother's wife at times as 'Bow' (brother's wife), sometimes endearingly as sister and at other times as Mrino. The name Kapalkundala was a bit horrible so women-folk called her Mrinmoyee. We, too, shall hence forward call her by this name though not too often. Shyamasundari was reciting verses from a nursery poem:
They say the lotus-queen that veils her
face when falls the night
Makes buds to ope and bees to flee as her
dear lord's in sight.
With leaves spread-out to the tree the
woodland creeper flies,
So the river stream when comes the
flood to the ocean hies.
