s well as I might, with
this great leaf.

And she held it up before him, while he continued to gaze at her in
silence. And as he did not speak, she looked at him curiously, and
muttered under her breath, as though speaking to herself, and not
intending him to hear: Can he have suddenly recollected his former
birth, and is this the reason why he is staring at me, as if wishing to
compare me with a picture in his head? And as he still kept silence,
presently she said aloud: Dear, thou art sick: and much in need of
medicines, such as I alone can give thee. Why wilt thou not confide in
me? For I am a cunning leech, and know the virtue of every herb and
every vegetable drug better than Dhanwantari[16] himself. And I have
made myself mistress of every species of the art of healing, and in
particular, I have fed myself on perfumes, and on the essences of
flowers, and all the scented odours of aromatic shrubs, till I have
myself become as it were a very attar, incarnate in a woman's form. Dost
thou doubt it, and think me to be boasting? then try me, and I will
prove to thee my power by experiment, in any way thou wilt I will soothe
and shampoo[17] thee with a hand softer than a snowflake's fall and
cooler than the icy moon: or, if thou wilt, I will croon to thee old
airs, and put thee to sleep like a tired child, resting thy head on this
bosom which once was thy delight, with melodies that shall speak to thee
of drowzy bees and moaning winds: or I will steal thy waking senses from
thee and lure them into slumber as it were against thy will by snaring
them with fragrances more luscious than that _parijata_ blossom, which
Wishnu once trailed through the intoxicated world, to drive it into
madness at the moment, and leave it filled with inconsolable regret when
it was gone. See, take this, and smell it, and thou wilt be better even
now.

[16] The physician of the gods, the Hindoo Aesculapius.

[17] The _Samwahanam_ is one of those old Hindoo medical
resources which we have only recently been wise enough to
copy.

And she held out towards him, in the lotus of her hand, a tiny flower,
in colour like an atom of the concentrated essence of the sky. And as
Aja looked at it, there came from it a stream of a sharp and biting
scent, that rushed into his soul, coming laden as it were with
reminiscence and suggestions of the past; so that he said to himself:
Ha! of what does this remind me, and where is it that I smelled it