O Chamu, is
this thy story, and is this all?

And Chamu laughed softly, and he said: Maharaj, he is a sage, who knows
where to stop. But I will have compassion on thy curiosity, and this
much I will tell thee in addition, that one of the speakers was a woman.
And yet I am not sure about it, for if there is another woman like her
in the three worlds, I will cut off my own head, and give to thee as a
footstool, since it is fit for absolutely nothing else. And even as it
is, I think, after all, that I must have fallen asleep in the clump of
bushes, and seen her in a dream: compounding for myself a vision out of
old memories of Apsarases and Yakshinis, and Nagas, and fragments of old
fairy tales and stories that my mother told me long ago, when I was a
child.

And Atirupa looked at him with surprise: and he said: Chamu, this is
very strange, and thou art not like thyself. Hast thou been eating
poppy,[23] or art thou only drunk with wine? For it is no ordinary
vision that could turn thee into a poet. Come now, go on. Describe for
me the beauty that has awoken such emotion in a soul as dull and muddy
as thy own.

[Footnote 23: _Ahiphena_, "snake-foam," said by Udoy Chand Dutt in his
_Materia Medica Indica_ to be derived from the Arabic _afyoon_, as it
was apparently unknown in India before the Musulman invasion.]

And Chamu said: O Maharaj, who can describe the indescribable? There are
things that cannot be described, but only seen: hardly even then to be
believed, when gazed at by the eye. Can anything imitate and reproduce
the beauty of the blue lotus, but the pool in which it is reflected? The
wandering wind may carry, like myself, its fragrance to a distance, but
cannot perform the work that belongs only to the mirror of the pool. So
take counsel of the wind, and go thyself, and become the pool.

And Atirupa laughed joyfully, and he exclaimed: O Chamu, thou art
certainly bewitched, and this wood-nymph has cast over thee a spell:
turning thee into a very breeze of sandalwood from Malaya.

And Chamu said: Laugh, Maharaj: and as I told thee it would be, so it
is: thou dost not believe. But when thou hast seen her eyes, and when
thou hast heard her voice, and when thou hast gazed at her, as I did,
coming straight towards thee, walking, thou wilt laugh no longer: for
the scorn incarnate in the pride of her great breast will make thee
giddy, and the roundness of her hips will steal thy heart and burn it to
a cinder, and