He is at first at a loss to extricate himself from this difficulty but a thought strikes him and he acts upon it.  He sends the jester as his substitute to the city.  He is now at leisure to seek out the love-sick Sakuntala who is drooping on account of her love for the king and is discovered lying on a bed of flowers in an arbour.  He comes to the hermitage, overhears her conversation with her two friends, shows himself and offers to wed her.  For a second time, the lovers thus meet.  He enquires of her parentage to see if there is any obstacle to their being united in marriage; whereupon Sakuntala asks her companion Priyambada to satisfy the king with an account of her birth.  The king hearing the story of her birth asks the companion to get the consent of Sakuntala to be married to him according to the form known as gandharva.

Sakuntala requests the king to wait till her foster-father Kanwa, who had gone out on a pilgrimage, would come back and give his consent.  But the king, becoming importunate, she at last gives her consent.  They are married according to the gandharva form, on the condition that the issue of the marriage should occupy the throne of Hastinapur.  She accepts from her lord a marriage-ring as the token of recognition.

The king then goes away, after having promised to shortly send his ministers and army to escort her to his Capital.  When Kanwa returns to the hermitage, he becomes aware of what has transpired during his absence by his spiritual powers, and congratulates Sakuntala on having chosen a husband worthy of her in every respect.  Next day, when Sakuntala is deeply absorbed in thoughts about her absent lord, the celebrated choleric sage Durvasa comes and demands the rights of hospitality.  But he is not greeted with due courtesy by Sakuntala owing to her pre-occupied state.  Upon this, the ascetic pronounces a curse that he whose thought has led her to forget her duties towards guests, would disown her.

Sakuntala does not hear it, but Priyambada hears it and by entreaties appeases the wrath of the sage, who being conciliated ordains that the curse would cease at the sight of some ornament of recognition.

Sakuntala becomes quick with child and in the seventh month of her pregnancy is sent by her foster-father to Hastinapur, in the company of her sister Gautami, and his two disciples Sarngarva and Saradwata.  Priyambada stays in the hermitage.  Sakuntala takes leave of the sacred grove in which she has been brought up, of her flowers, her gazelles and her friends.

The aged hermit of the grove thus expresses his feelings at the approaching loss of Sakuntala:—­

“My heart is touched with sadness at the thought, “Sakuntala must go to-day”; my throat is choked with flow of tears repressed; my sight is dimmed with pensiveness but if the grief of an old forest hermit is so great, how keen must be the pang a father feels when freshly parted from a cherished child!”