Shakuntala.  What will my husband say?

King (listening with anxious suspicion).  What is this insinuation?

Shakuntala (to herself).  Oh, oh!  So haughty and so slanderous!

Sharngarava.  “What is this insinuation?” What is your question?  Surely you know the world’s ways well enough.

  Because the world suspects a wife
  Who does not share her husband’s lot,
  Her kinsmen wish her to abide
  With him, although he love her not.

King.  You cannot mean that this young woman is my wife.

Shakuntala (sadly to herself).  Oh, my heart, you feared it, and now it has come. Sharngarava.  O King,

  A king, and shrink when love is done,
  Turn coward’s back on truth, and flee!

King.  What means this dreadful accusation?

Sharngarava (furiously).

  O drunk with power!  We might have known
  That you were steeped in treachery.

King.  A stinging rebuke!

Gautami (to SHAKUNTALA).  Forget your shame, my child.  I will remove your veil.  Then your husband will recognise you. (She does so.)

King (observing SHAKUNTALA. To himself).

  As my heart ponders whether I could ever
  Have wed this woman that has come to me
  In tortured loveliness, as I endeavour
  To bring it back to mind, then like a bee

  That hovers round a jasmine flower at dawn,
  While frosty dews of morning still o’erweave it,
  And hesitates to sip ere they be gone,
  I cannot taste the sweet, and cannot leave it.

Portress (to herself).  What a virtuous king he is!  Would any other man hesitate when he saw such a pearl of a woman coming of her own accord?

Sharngarava.  Have you nothing to say, O King?

King.  Hermit, I have taken thought.  I cannot believe that this woman is my wife.  She is plainly with child.  How can I take her, confessing myself an adulterer?

Shakuntala (to herself).  Oh, oh, oh!  He even casts doubt on our marriage.  The vine of my hope climbed high, but it is broken now.

Sharngarava.  Not so.

  You scorn the sage who rendered whole
  His child befouled, and choked his grief,
  Who freely gave you what you stole
  And added honour to a thief!

Sharadvata.  Enough, Sharngarava.  Shakuntala, we have said what we were sent to say.  You hear his words.  Answer him.

Shakuntala (to herself).  He loved me so.  He is so changed.  Why remind him?  Ah, but I must clear my own character.  Well, I will try. (Aloud.) My dear husband—­(She stops.) No, he doubts my right to call him that.  Your Majesty, it was pure love that opened my poor heart to you in the hermitage.  Then you were kind to me and gave me your promise.  Is it right for you to speak so now, and to reject me?