the rejoinder 'சின்னாட் செலுமுனம் தேர்குவன் நீ சொல் கட்டுரைத் திண்ணம்' (I.ii. 98-101). Her contrition of heart that she had not expressed her love openly to NATARAJAN - a fault common enough with the coy maidens of her sex - is really feminine and bewitching (I.ii. 122-127). Her steadfastness in love adds dignity to her character and seems to proceed not from a blind passion but from a seasoned will. She proclaims how her lover has taken possession of her whole soul (I.ii. 49-52) and openly avows her resolution to die in the event of her love being crossed (I.ii. 39-40). That this is no idle threat may be easily seen from the way in which she resolve to live unmarried till MANONMANI gets the lover after her heart. VANI, it must be noticed, has a will of her own, a will strong and unbending, a will which will not easily give up the course on which it has fastened itself. Her whole demeanour and reply in the interview with JIVAKA are pitched in a becoming key and she comes out of it with flying colours, although the poor old king was driven to have recourse to a blind flat in a domestic matter proceeding unabashed from the Sovereign authority of the land. Truly VANI rises in our estimation by her resolution not to be browbeaten in a course in which she, young as she was, was in the right and the grey - haired, avaricious, short sighted SAKADA, her father, and his equally short-sighted, venerable patron JIVAKA were certainly in the wrong. Her dictum 'நேசமில்வதுவை நாசகாரணமே' (I.iv. 76) must touch a sympathetic chord in the hearts of all. In spite, however, of these pleading for love, she sometimes seems to talk quite in a detached manner. Her discourse on love in I.iv. 82-104, is one we should expect from a psychologist given to poetising and not one who is in the grip of that imperious passion. She talks abstractedly of loving without reason; but it would require very little introspection to be convinced that she herself had loved NATARAJAN and shunned PALADEVA for certain reasons of her own and not quite whimsically. After all, human personality is not such a poor blind thing to be tossed this side and that and made a tool of by this strange force 'love' visiting it from another sphere. Idealistic jargon apart, VANI loves NATARAJAN for many estimable qualities both of mind and body and these should furnish the reason why she had been attracted to him. A well-behaved contemplative person like NATARAJAN is more likely to captivate her than the dissolute son of KUDILA who is a soldier engaged in carnage. And yet she did not recount such virtues, possibly thinking that they should not be made matter of a common wrangle with persons who had already prejudged him. VANI, taking her on her own valuation, should be the last to be infected with mystic tendencies; she is always for the realities of life. And yet she too is made to part from us talking high Philosophy and giving us a token of her unbroken faith in the grace or beneficence which circles and controls all existence (V.ii. 164-7). Before parting with VANI, we have to view