s clasped my hand and
come out.
Her hair is flying in the wind, her veil is fluttering, her
garland rustles over her breast.
The push of death has swung her into life.
We are face to face and heart to heart, my bride and I.

83

She dwelt on the hillside by the edge of a maize-field, near the
spring that flows in laughing rills through the solemn shadows
of ancient trees. The women came there to fill their jars, and
travellers would sit there to rest and talk. She worked and
dreamed daily to the tune of the bubbling stream.

One evening the stranger came down from the cloud-hidden peak;
his locks were tangled like drowsy snakes. We asked in wonder,
"Who are you?" He answered not but sat by the garrulous stream
and silently gazed at the hut where she dwelt. Our hearts
quaked in fear and we came back home when it was night.

Next morning when the women came to fetch water at the spring by
the _deodar_ trees, they found the doors open in her hut,
but her voice was gone and where was her smiling face? The
empty jar lay on the floor and her lamp had burnt itself out in
the corner. No one knew where she had fled to before it was
morning--and the stranger had gone.

In the month of May the sun grew strong and the snow melted, and
we sat by the spring and wept. We wondered in our mind, "Is
there a spring in the land where she has gone and where she can
fill her vessel in these hot thirsty days?" And we asked each
other in dismay, "Is there a land beyond these hills where we
live?"

It was a summer night; the breeze blew from the south; and I sat
in her deserted room where the lamp stood still unlit. When
suddenly from before my eyes the hills vanished like curtains
drawn aside. "Ah, it is she who comes. How are you, my child?
Are you happy? But where can you shelter under this open sky?
And, alas, our spring is not here to allay your thirst."

"Here is the same sky," she said, "only free from the fencing
hills,--this is the same stream grown into a river,--the same
earth widened into a plain." "Everything is here," I sighed,
"only we are not." She smiled sadly and said, "You are in my
heart." I woke up and heard the babbling of the stream and the
rustling of the _deodars_ at night.

84

Over the green and yellow rice-fields sweep the shadows of the
autumn clouds followed by the swif