hat she can be the daughter of a
cold and learned hermit; the moon must have created her, or the god of
love himself. As the chariot descends, Urvasi, frightened, leans
against the king's shoulder, and the little hairs on his body stand up
straight, so much is he pleased thereat. He brings her back to the
other apsaras, who are on a mountain-top awaiting their return.
Urvasi, too much overcome to thank him for her rescue, begs one of her
friends to do it for her, whereupon the apsaras, bidding him good-by,
rise into the air. Urvasi lingers a moment on the pretence that her
pearl necklace has got entangled in a vine, but in reality to get
another peep at the king, who addresses fervent words of thanks to the
bush for having thus given him another chance to look on her face.
"Rising into the air," he exclaims, "this girl tears my heart from my
body and carries it away with her."

The queen soon notices that his heart has gone away with another. She
complains of this estrangement to her maid, to whom she sets the task
of discovering the secret of it. The maid goes at it slyly. Addressing
the king's viduschaka (confidential adviser), she informs him that the
queen is very unhappy because the king addressed her by the name of
the girl he longs for. "What?" retorts the viduschaka--"the king
himself has revealed the secret? He called her Urvasi?" "And who, your
honor, is Urvasi?" says the maid. "She is one of the apsaras," he
says. "The sight of her has infatuated the king's senses so that he
tortures not only the queen but me, the Brahman, too, for he no longer
thinks of eating." But he expresses his conviction that the folly will
not last long, and the maid departs.

Urvasi, tortured, like the king, by love and doubt, suppresses her
bashfulness and asks one of her friends to go with her to get her
pearl necklace which she had left entangled in the vine. "Then you are
hurrying down, surely, to see Pururavas, the king?" says the friend;
"and whom have you sent in advance?" "My heart," replied Urvasi. So
they fly down to the earth, invisible to mortals, and when they see
the king, Urvasi declares that he seems to her even more beautiful
than at their first meeting. They listen to the conversation between
him and the viduschaka. The latter advises his master to seek
consolation by dreaming of a union with his love, or by painting her
picture, but the king answers that dreams cannot come to a man who is
unable to sleep, nor wou