ch her coming,
and adore it, and delay it, but she reached me in a moment, and she
stopped, and said with a smile: I am very glad to see thee. I sent
thee, by the mouth of Chaturika, a time, and yet I hardly dared to
hope for thy coming: since doubtless thou hast a better use for thy
hours than to waste them upon me.

And I stared at her, in utter stupefaction: and then, all at once I
began to laugh. And I exclaimed: Waste! I do not understand. What dost
thou mean? Or what was thy object in bidding me to come to thee at
sunset? Surely not merely to talk to me of music? And she looked at me
gently, with surprise. And she said: Of course. What other object
could I have? And I looked at her in silence, saying to myself: Can it
really be possible that she means exactly what she says, and that this
was the only significance of the word she sent to me? And suddenly I
leaned towards her, with hunger in my eyes. And I said: Then indeed, I
was mistaken. It was not so, that I interpreted thy summons. Alas! O
Tarawali, the only music that I came for was the music of thy
incomparable voice, and I thought it was thy own deliberate intention
to send for me simply that I might listen to it again, as I gazed on
its owner with adoration.

And she looked at me reproachfully, and she said: Again! Alas! I
imagined that thou wouldst ere now have recovered from thy shock of
yesterday, and be able now to help me; and yet, here is thy delusion
returning, as it seems, even worse than before. See now, forget
altogether that I am a woman, and let us talk of music, like two
friends. And I laughed in derision, and I exclaimed: Forget that thou
art a woman! Ask me rather to forget I am a man. Art thou blind, or
hast thou never even looked into a mirror? Dost thou imagine me less
than a man, bidding me forget that she is a woman who stands before
me, as thou dost, smiling, and bewildering my soul with her maddening
loveliness, and the absolute perfection of her body and her soul,
showing the hungry man food, and forbidding him to eat, and the
thirsty man water, and requiring him to think of it as something it is
not? Or art thou all the time only playing, having no heart in thy
body, or a stone for a heart? Didst thou summon me only to torture and
torment me? Dost thou not know, canst thou not see, the agony of my
suffering, standing close enough to seize thee in my arms, and yet
kept at a distance, to listen to what I cannot even understand? I tel