what she was herself.
So now, then, I will change her name, lest some day in the future it
should betray her to my cousin: for her name would be a clue, leading to
her destruction. And as a rule, to lose a name is the same thing as to
disappear, and die, and be forgotten. So she shall die, as Alipriya, to
be reborn as Aranyani. And what does the title matter? For the bees will
love her just as well, by one name as the other.[25]

[Footnote 24: An untranslateable play on _dari_, wood, and _sundari_, a
beautiful woman.]

[Footnote 25: _Alipriya_, "beloved of the bees," a name of the trumpet
flower, _Bignonia suaveolens_. _Aranyani_, a forest goddess, nymph, or
dryad. Pronounce Urrun-nyani.]

So then Aranyani grew up alone with her father in the forest, with her
identity disguised, turned as it were from a queen into a woodman's
daughter, and lying hidden and unknown, like a pearl in an ocean shell.
And yet she resembled fire, that refuses to be concealed, betraying its
true nature through no matter what envelops it, and shining through, by
chinks and holes, the wrapping that would hide it, even when it does not
burn. For brought up in the forest though she was, and half alone, since
her father often left her by herself, all day long, yet strange to say!
the rudeness of her wild condition ran over her, leaving her soul
untouched, like the water running in crystal drops that beautify but do
not wet the neck of a royal swan. And one day she was discovered like a
treasure in the wood by a band of hermits' daughters, that were roaming
at a distance from the hermitage, away in the forest's heart. And those
daughters of the sages all fell suddenly in love with her at once, not
only for her eyes, that reminded them of the deer that were their
playmates in their home, but still more for the strange and wild
sweetness of her soul, that resembled absolutely nothing but itself. And
every now and then, they used to come and play with her, when they
rambled in the wood, telling her innumerable stories which they heard
from their fathers, those mines of sacred wisdom. And then, very soon,
those daughters of the hermits found, to their amazement, that they
resembled fools, pouring water into a well. For she remembered
everything when she had only heard it once,[26] and meditating over it
alone, not only squeezed out of its mango all the juice which it
contained, but planted its kernel like a seed of heavenly wisdom in her
heart, and