146 CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM
How happy would have been the story if it
had ended thus I So did the great poet Valmiki
intend it. And so for hundreds of years must
men have known it. But in some later age, by
an unknown hand, a sequel was written, and this
sequel is strangely sad. It tells how the terrible
ordeal of Sita had not after all been enough, or
perhaps had taken place too far away, to satisfy
her people. The murmuring and suspicion that
Rama had foreseen, did, after all, break out, and
when he heard this the King knew that it was
useless to fight against the inevitable, Sita and
he must henceforth dwell apart. For the good
of his subjects a king must be willing to make any
sacrifices, and it could never, he felt, be for their
well-being that their sovereign's conduct should
be misunderstood. But though his will was thus
heroic, Rama could not trust himself to see Sita
and say his last good-bye to her, face to face.
He sent her, therefore, in the care of Lakshmana,
to make a long-desired pilgrimage to the hermitage of Valmiki, on the far side of the Ganges.
There Lakshmana was to give his parting messages, and take farewell of her.
Oh how terrible was the desolation of Sita on this occasion! There was, indeed, the consolation that she understood her husband, and he her. The last words of each for the other made this separation of theirs like the plighting
