be like,
shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shape
essential to her sex, which is far the most important thing of all,
being general instead of special, as every woman seen dimly in the
dark, or at a distance, or with her face hidden by a veil, will prove,
being then above all most attractive when her face cannot be seen at
all: as the story that I told thee of the ugly lady, not long ago,
shows, if thou hast not forgotten it.[37] Whereas the thing special to
Tarawali was her incomparable soul, in which were mingled elements
hardly ever to be found combined, gentleness and strength, and
simplicity almost naive, with subtlety beyond all comparison, and
pride that never took offence, and superlative beauty with humility,
and submissiveness with extreme independence of spirit, and kindness
without weakness, and feminine sweetness of disposition with the
intellectual vigour of a man, and his courage, and his candour, all of
which combined with her extraordinary bodily beauty to make her a
paragon of intoxication utterly irresistible to every male[38] she
came across, like a very Prakriti in a woman's form.

And Parwati said: How canst thou lavish such praise on a woman so
deservedly slain by her infuriated lover, when he suddenly awoke to
the discovery of the real nature behind the mask?

And the great god laughed again, and he looked at her shrewdly and he
said: Aha! Snowy One, said I not that thou wert asleep as I read? I
shall have to repeat to thee the story all over again another time.
Dost thou actually not see that all she said, from beginning to end,
was absolutely true? For Shatrunjaya told the whole story very well,
as he understood it; but he did not understand completely, and made a
terrible error in the most important point of all, being led astray by
what he had heard, and easily taken in. For blinded by his rage
against his rival Narasinha, he came suddenly to the wrong conclusion,
and slew her by mistake, never so much as giving her time for any
explanation. For her eyes never wavered, as he thought, for guilt, but
for quite another reason. And Narasinha really was, exactly as she
said, her tyrant, nor had she anything to do with his assassination of
her lovers, which he committed all on his own account, out of
jealousy, paying no attention at all to her intercession. But in her
gentleness, she shrank from the very idea of any violence, and this
was the true cause of the wavering o