a
palm tree shorn of its head the look of a tumble-down smoke-grimed
chimney. Unshorn, leaning to the wind, it is the most graceful thing
in the world, especially seen against the setting sun.]

[Footnote 35: The great jewel on Wishnu's breast.]

[Footnote 36: Literally, with a _sashtanganamaskara_: i.e. _with an
obeisance made by falling prostrate with the eight corners of the
body_, a form of profound reverence made as to a divinity.]

III

A Story without an End

And then, Maheshwara tossed the last leaf into the air. And as it
floated away down the stream, he said to the goddess, as she listened
with attention: And yet he never came, as I told thee at the
beginning. For Narasinha was beforehand with him, after all.

And the Daughter of the Snow sat silent, looking away down the river
after the floating leaf, until it was lost to sight. And then she said
slowly: Why didst thou say in the beginning that Tarawali was the most
extraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come? For I was
deceived by thy encomium, expecting a woman altogether different from
her, who was only but a specimen of her sex.

And the Moony-crested god burst into loud laughter. And he exclaimed:
Speak low, O Snowy One: for if thy mortal sisters overheard thee
betraying their secrets and their cause, they would be very angry, and
perhaps begin to curse thee as a traitor, instead of offering thee
worship, as they all do now. What! dost thou actually deem her to be
but a type of all the rest? Surely, thou must have been asleep all the
time that I was reading, after all: since thou hast either
misunderstood her altogether, or it may be, wilt not do her justice,
out of jealousy: since no woman in the three worlds can ever be
trusted to judge another fairly, treating her always as a criminal and
a rival, and falling on her tooth and nail, especially if, like
Tarawali, she sets custom at defiance, going by an independent
standard of her own. But now, let me help thee to see how utterly
mistaken is thy estimate of a character so rare as hardly to be
matched in the whole of space and time for her cleverness and her
candour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of the
account, as that one element in her common to a very host of others.
For the Creator was not such a bungler as to confine all feminine
beauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, since
almost every woman in the world, no matter what her face