h my father, I
was lying, on a day, at noon, when I had been following a quarry in
the jungle till I ached with fatigue, resting on a river bank: and so
as I lay, unawares I fell asleep. And I thought that I wandered
through a palace that I had never seen before, till suddenly I came
upon a terrace that stood on the very margin of a lake, that was
filled with myriads of lotuses, all turned red by the rays of the
setting sun, which stood never moving on the top of a low hill, as if
it were watching me to see what I should do, before it went away. And
there was such a strange silence that I began to be afraid, as if of
something that was just about to happen, without knowing what. And so
as we all stood waiting in the dusk, I and the lotuses and the sun,
all at once I heard behind me a voice like a _kokila_, saying quietly:
I have kept thee a long while waiting: wilt thou forgive?

And I turned round, and looked, and lo! there was a lady, looking at
me with a smile. And she was standing so absolutely still, that she
resembled an image made of copper, for exactly like the lotuses, she
was all red in the rays of the sun, and her dark clothing shone like
the leaf of a palm seen at midnight in the glow of a fire. And her
hair was massed like that of an ascetic high over her brow, and on its
dull black cloud there shone a gem that resembled a star, shooting and
flickering and changing colour like a diamond mixed with an opal:
while underneath, her eyes, that resembled pools filled with dusk
instead of water, were fixed on me as if in meditation, as if half in
doubt as to whether I was I. And yet her lips were smiling, not as if
they meant to smile, but just because they could not help it, driven
by the sweetness of the soul that lay behind them to betray its secret
unawares. And the perfect oval of the outline of her face was lifted,
so to say, into the superlative degree of soft fascination by a faint
suggestion of the round ripeness of a fruit in its bloom, as if the
Creator, by some magical extra touch of his chisel, had wished to
exclaim: See how the full loveliness of a woman surpasses the delicate
promise of a girl! And she was rather tall, and she stood up very
straight indeed, so straight, that my heart laughed within me as I
looked at her, for sheer delight, so admirably upright was the poise
of her figure, and yet so round and delicious was the curve of her
arms and her slender waist, that rose as if with exultation