In the great hall princes and nobles feasted with mirth and music.  Laughter and outcries and mad revelry re-echoed through the stately archways and marble courts.  Lal Singh was there, and great honour was rendered to him, for this was the time of his betrothal, and the bride was Moti.  The festival had lasted for two days, and would be prolonged for many more.  Moti was forgotten.  The little maid who loved her lay on the floor at her feet and wept because Moti wept.  Those who with zither and dance should have beguiled the hours, had stolen away to peep through latticed screens at the revelry.

Moti thought of Atma and moaned, but the little maid thought only of her mistress, and bewailed the fate that had joined her bright spirit by unseen bonds of love to one pre-doomed by inheritance to misfortune.

“For adversity loved his father’s house,” she sighed; “it is ill to consort with the unfortunate, for in time we share their woe.”

But Moti wrung her beautiful hands and cried: 

     “Ah if this breath of mine might purchase his! 
     Then death were fair and lovely as he said
     In that enchanted even hour when he
     Of love, and death, and moans, and constancy
     Told till dark things grew lovely, and o’erhead
     Sweet stars seemed ghosts, and shadow all that is.

     But I have lost my life and yet not death
     Have won, and now to me shall joy be strange,
     And all my days the kindly winds that breathe
     From mirthful groves of Paradise shall change
     In my poor songless soul to wail, and sigh,
     And moan, and hollow silence—­let me die!

     Poor me! who fearless snatched at bliss so high,
     Witless! and yet to be of slight esteem
     And little worth is sometimes well, no dream
     Of high unrest, no awful afterglow
     Affrights us simple ones when that we die. 
     Vain flickering lamps soon quenched—­we but go
     From this brief day, this short transition,
     This interlude of farcial joy and woe,
     Back to our native, kind oblivion.

     Can this be Moti, she who prates of being,
     And life, and death, and fallacy, and moan? 
     Ah, how should I be fixed and steadfast? seeing
     All things about me shift, I need must change;
     Things which I thought were plain are waxen strange,
     Things are unfathomable which I deemed
     Shallow and bare; nay, maid, I do not rave,
     Sunbeams are mysteries, and Love that seemed
     All winged joy, and transport light as air,
     Ah me, but Love is deeper than the grave,
     Is deeper than the grave; I seek it there. 
     Dear Death, bind Love for me, till that I die!

     And he is doomed to die who loved me! 
     O bitter, bitter end of tenderness! 
     O doleful issue of my happiness! 
     Weep, little maid, for one that loved me!