THE SUPREME NIGHT
I used to go to the same dame's school with Surabala and play at marriage with her. When I paid visits to her house, her mother would pet me, and setting us side by side would say to herself: "What a lovely pair!"
I was a child then, but I could understand her meaning well enough. The idea became rooted in my mind that I had a special right to Surabala above that of people in general. So it happened that, in the pride of ownership, at times I punished and tormented her; and she, too, fagged for me and bore all my punishments without complaint. The village was wont to praise her beauty; but in the eyes of a young barbarian like me that beauty had no glory;—I knew only that Surabala had been born in her father's house solely to beat my yoke, and that therefore she was the particular object of my neglect.
My father was the land-steward of the Chaudhuris, a family of zemindars. It was his plan, as soon as I had learnt to write a good hand, to train
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