‘Why, are you jealous of him?’ she said coquettishly.
‘No one ever loved without being jealous,’ he said holding her. ‘Do you know of any?’
‘I feel sorry for him that I made him waste his time in my unsuccessful seduction.’
‘How generous you are,’ he said, ‘even to your adversary.’
‘But still, won’t he have a cause of action to claim opportunity costs from me,’ she said in jest, only to continue reflectively, ‘Shortly after you left, he came to force me into surrender. How he made it clear that he came determined to drag me into bed. Oh God, how intense was he in his intent then, and what a storm he created at that. How he tried every tool in his lusty kit to wrench my resolve, why he even threatened to kill himself with my kitchen knife. Since I yield even then, he injured himself with the knife on hand as if carrying out his threat to kill himself in his unrequited love for me. When, I remained unmoved after all that, he called me a frigid flirt and angered by my stony silence, he left in a huff, never to return.’
‘Maybe he too loves you,’ said Raja Rao
‘While he lusted after me like nobody else,’ she said reminiscently, ‘he never came to love me, why, my sixth sense warned me from the beginning about it, if not, he could have had me much before you made me yours. Oh, you can only see to believe the intensity of his passion that day! Thank God, your August visit saved the day for our love and me as well; otherwise, I don’t think I could have mustered the strength to resist him then.’
As she hugged him with the relief associated with having escaped some danger, he held her with the feeling associated in retrieving a valued object before its accidental fall, and said, ‘But would he leave it at that. What if he begins spying upon you?’
‘I told Sathyam about it all, to take the wind out of his sails of mischief,’ she said coolly. ‘But I don’t think we need to worry about him any more. After all, the vanity of man makes him believe that if a woman shuns him, she would snub others as well, but, should man suspect that a woman is carrying on with someone, he would imagine that she could be an easy lay for him as well. It’s all because man tends to picture woman’s preferences through the prism of his fallacies, and not in the mirror of her proclivities.’