in her hair?
Say, dost thou never dream of her? And she shook his arm with frenzy,
and exclaimed: Ha! wake from thy magic sleep, and tear away the curtain
that hides me from thy blinded soul. I will, I will awake thee. I will
not be forgotten. And all at once, she burst into a passion of tears.
And she reeled, as though about to fall, and tottered, and threw
herself, sobbing hard, against his breast.

[27] The Sanskrit _dwipa_ has exactly the same connotation
as our islands of the Blest, and like them it is placed in
the setting sun.

And while she spoke, Aja stood, like one pushed to the very edge of a
precipice, pale as death, and breathing hard, spellbound. And then at
last, when she threw herself upon his breast, again a shudder ran
through all his limbs. And as if her touch had shattered to pieces the
last fragment of his resolution, he caught her around the waist with the
one arm that was free. And with tears in his own eyes, he stammered, as
if in the extremity of desperation, hardly knowing what he said: Alas! I
have been harsh to thee. O lovely browed beauty, cease to weep. Why, O
why, did I not meet thee sooner by only a single day?

XII.

And at that very moment, he heard behind him a deep sigh. And as he
turned, wood, poppies, and all vanished from before his eyes. Once more
he stood on the city wall; and there before him was the King's
daughter. And she was standing in the doorway, through which he had come
upon the wall, leaning against the open door, and paler than Love's own
ashes, while her great dark eyes were frozen as it were to ice, and yet
lit up by the triple fire of sorrow and reproach and fierce disdain. And
she looked like the daughter of Janaka, when forsaken by the lord of the
race of Raghu, and like the heavenly Urwashi, when abandoned by
Pururawas, a very spirit of despair carved by the Creator into a stony
female form, to break the heart of the three worlds. And as if the very
sight of her had broken the spell that held him, reason and recollection
suddenly returned to Aja, as it were at a single bound. And he woke, as
if from a magic sleep, and on the instant, a sword ran as it were
straight into his heart. And with a cry, he flung away his sobbing
burden like a blade of grass, not caring where it fell: and ran towards
the King's daughter. But she, when she saw him coming, shrieked, and
started, and exclaimed: Away! Touch me not, save with the point of thy
sharp true s