Soon she left, still dazed, and he remained remorseful and too perplexed to follow her to apologize for his rashness but when he recovered from the shock of her hurt, he ventured through the vestibules to locate her on the moving train. As he sighted her, at long last, still in a state of shock, his heart sank into the depths of agony. He got vexed even more as he found her pixilated in spite of all those apologetic gestures he came up with to soothe her soul. Her indifference made him feel worse for her sake. Feeling wretched himself, he thought only his love could alleviate her hurt and their souls couldn’t be solaced but in their embrace. Oh, how was he to convince her about that! Where was the privacy to pressure her into a love saving embrace?
Not to embarrass her further with his forthrightness, he sauntered in the aisle to attract her attention. As she failed to yield, he riveted near her to make her relent. At length, as though responding to his body language, she looked at him with a vacant look that suggested all was over between them. So as not to compound her misery with his embarrassing presence, he left her with a heavy heart.
Back in the coupe, he sat distraught in her thought. As he cursed himself for his misdemeanor, his craving for her pardon was accentuated. While his remorse helped nourish his love for her, nevertheless, he suffered on that score. Just the same, he didn’t dare venture to see her again, fearing he might make her suffer even more. And thus, he never knew where her journey had ended and when her ordeal was over. But that incident, however, haunted him for weeks on end.
‘Wasn’t it a case of love at first sight that induced a sense of mutual belonging in us,’ he reminisced presently. ‘No denying it, though. I should’ve befriended her before proposing, and she couldn’t have refused for sure. Maybe by now, we could have been expecting our first-born. Who knows?’
‘But, why did it all go haywire?’ he thought in regret all again. ‘I lost my head and went wayward on her body, didn’t I? What led me to mislay my hand on her? Was it owing to the craving of my flesh or the urge of my love? Oh didn’t I know that it was the passion of my soul to possess her that triggered it all. Until it all ended in a huff, didn’t we enjoy a smooth ride on the silken path of love? Wasn’t my urgency to close in on her breasts that alienated her heart, once and for all? Maybe, I was compelled to feel the rhythm of her heart beats rhymed by the emotions of her love for me. What a fall it was, after a dream start! Oh, what an ignominious end it was after that ecstatic beginning.’