“Yhahil,” he one day said, “why am I despised?” “You are not despised, Goutama; not to love a man is not to despise him, and you know that our affections are not in our own keeping.” “But why can you not love me? You cannot desire to live unmarried; and where will you find a husband, if you do not wed a Pariah?” “It is true, indeed, that I would be married; but I must find a husband whom I can love, otherwise I shall submit to the curse of maidenhood,--for I never could attach myself to a man who had not obtained an entire ascendancy over my heart.” “But where do you think of seeking for such a man, if you reject the whole race to which you and your family belong?” “If I find not a man of caste, I tell you honestly I shall never marry.” “Alas! Yhahil, you would spurn from you one who venerates the earth you tread upon, for a phantom which you can never possess. Would you marry a Brahmin only because he is a Brahmin?” “Not without he had won my affections; but, in truth, the degradation attached to the Pariah excludes him from those affections.” “Would you refuse to wed a Pariah if you loved him?” “Certainly not, if I loved him, but I never could love him. You, Goutama, would have secured my affection, if it had been possible that it should fix upon one of your tribe, but it is not; I feel my blood curdle at the very name. My repugnance is invincible. We are outcasts, and I would live united by that social bond which would make me a member of a respected community.” “Alas! you are preparing a load of misery for yourself, as well as for one who would gladly endure it, provided he could bear it in conjunction with you. I see nothing but a gloomy prospect before us both. Will you afford me no hope?” “It were hypocrisy in me to encourage hope, as I never can become your bride; fate has placed an impassable bar betwixt us.” “Nay, not fate, Yhahil, but woman’s pride.” “As you will. The bar is nevertheless fixed, and there is no removing it. Seek, Goutama, some worthier object, and leave me to my destiny.” Yhahil’s parents were unhappy at not seeing their daughter married. She was in her fourteenth year, and still a maiden. She was their only girl, and tenderly beloved by both. The father would have gladly seen her united to a man who could have borne her into society which she could not be considered to contaminate; but, rather than she should not be married at all, he would willingly have consented to her becoming the wife of a Pariah. Among Hindoo women celibacy is the greatest stigma they can undergo; nevertheless the beautiful Yhahil was determined to bear the stigma, since she was precluded from becoming the wife of a husband who could lift up his head among his fellows without exhibiting the brand of pollution upon it.