d in the month of Chaitra[9], and
like that cloud, the heavy sorrow hung in her great dark mournful eyes,
drenching him as it were with a shower of dusky dreamy dewy beauty, and
drawing him down bewitched and lost like the victim of a haunted pool
into the snaky eddy of their silent unfathomable recess. And yet her
deep red lips trembled, as it were on the very border of a smile, as if
they were hinting against their will of a mine of laughter and subtle
snares that they were not allowed to use. And she had risen up to come
and meet him, yet was hanging back as if reluctant, and so she stood,
all reflected in the polished floor, with her head thrown back to look
at him, for she was very small, like one on the very point of imploring
help, yet shrinking, as if too proud to ask it from a stranger, balanced
as it were between reliance on her own pure and pleading beauty and
doubtfulness of its reception. So she halted irresolute, with glorious
throat that was hovering still over the swell of her lifted breasts,
poised as it were on the very verge of tumultuous oscillation, like that
of Rati, preparing with timidity to cast herself at the feet of the
three-eyed God, to beg back the body of her burned-up husband in a
passion of love-lorn tears.

[9] April.

And Aja stood before her, like the sea when the digit of the moon rises
suddenly over its waves, stirred with a tumult of strange emotions, and
yet lit by a heavenly ray, a mass of agitated darkness mixed with
dancing, trembling light; all unaware that he was himself to the King's
daughter exactly what she was to him, a weapon of bewilderment in the
hands of the cunning god of the flowery bow, who shot him suddenly at
her, like an arrow of intoxication, and pierced her through the very
middle of the soft lotus of her heart.

So they two stood awhile in silence. And all at once, Aja spoke, not
knowing that he spoke aloud. And he said, very slowly: How many
husbands, then, have already had this lustrous beauty, who looks for all
as pure and pale and undefiled as a new young delicate jasmine bud? And
instantly, as if roused from sleep by his reproach, he saw the colour
leap up into her cheek, and spread like dawn flushing over her burning
throat and brow. And she drew a sudden breath, and her bosom heaved
abruptly as if with a sob of shame. And at that moment, the voice of the
King her father broke harshly into Aja's dream, saying: Alas! alas!
Never a husband has had h