t behind me, and tasting, as it were, for an instant the
delicious promise that the dusky garden gave me, standing like a diver
on the edge of ocean, just before he plunges in, knowing well that it
holds a pearl. And I stretched my arms towards the trees, saying to
myself: This is not like the other times, but far, far better: for
to-night she will not ask me to give her a music lesson, but she said
herself, she would be my dream. And I wonder how she will do it, and
what she is going to do. And then I went on through the trees, looking
from side to side, with a soul as it were on tiptoe with curiosity and
anticipation. And far away through the trees I saw the red rim of the
full moon rising in a great hurry as if like myself he was dying with
impatience just to see her, and saying as it were: I am the only lamp
fit to light her, and I am just coming in another moment, like
herself. And I passed by her swing that hung drooping, as it were,
sadly from its tree, because she was not there. And little by little,
my heart began to crave for the sight of her, growing restless and
uneasy, and saying to itself with anxiety: What if something had
actually prevented her from coming, and the garden were really as
empty as it seems, and she were not here at all. And then at last I
reached the terrace by the pool, exactly where I saw her first, and
looked round with eager eyes, and she was not there. And then, just as
I was on the verge of sinking into the black abyss of disappointment,
all at once she came out of the shadow of a clump of great bamboos, in
which she had been hiding, as it seemed, just to tease me into the
belief she was not there, in order to intensify the unutterable
delight of her abrupt appearance. And she stood still, as if to let me
look at her, between two bamboo stems, just touching them with the
very tips of the fingers of each hand, and saying in her soft sweet
voice with a smile: Was I not right in choosing this as the only
proper place for thee to meet the lady of thy dream, where we met each
other first?

And I stood, confounded and as it were, dazed, by a vision so
marvellously lovely that it puzzled me, murmuring to myself: Can this
be Tarawali after all, and what has she done to herself, for she has
changed, somehow or other, into the incarnation of some deity exactly
like her, and she looks like an image of the wife of Wishnu[28] that
has somehow or other come down from its pedestal on a temple wall?