d tell the Queen
that I was not to be found. I will not come. And here is gold for
thee.

And Chaturika brushed away my bribe with a wave of her pretty arm. And
she leaned back against the door, holding the handle behind her, and
looking up at me from under her long lashes, with sweet crafty eyes,
and eyebrows lifted high into a double arch. And she put her head a
little on one side, and said, with a smile: Think twice, O
Shatrunjaya. Art thou a musician, and hast thou never heard the song:
Nectar when she turns towards thee: poison when she turns away?[21] Or
hast thou never tasted nectar, even in a dream? Remember, sunset! And
she shook at me her forefinger, and suddenly she opened the door, and
slipped out, and shut it, and was gone; leaving me staring at it in
stupefaction, and almost believing I was dreaming, so abruptly had she
come and gone. And I said to myself in wonder: Beyond a doubt, she
spoke at random, knowing nothing of my dream; and yet she made me
jump, for her arrow hit the mark exactly in the centre. But if the
maid is like the mistress, of whom she said herself, she was the
shadow, then very sure I am, it is not either maid or mistress, or
anybody the least like them, that could realise my dream. But all the
same, I am caught, for the moment, in their noose: and what is to be
done now? For she will go straight back and tell it all, to this
over-bearing busybody of a queen, and if now I do not go, it will seem
an incivility almost equal to an insult. For queens do not like to be
refused, and even their request is a kind of order, very difficult to
disobey. Out, out, upon this red intrusive jade, and her mistress, and
above all on myself, for my delay! For had I only gone away last
night, I should have got clean off.

And long I sat debating, balanced in the swing of indecision, as to
whether I should go, or not. And at last I exclaimed: I will give her
just a chance. And I drew my _kattari_ from its sheath, and I said:
Now I will throw it into the air. And if it falls back upon its point,
I will go and see her: but if not, not. And I threw it up, like a
juggler, so that it spun very quickly like a wheel: and lo! it fell
back, and stuck exactly on its point, standing straight up, as if on
purpose to imitate Chaturika's forefinger, and saying as it were: See!
thou shalt go, willy nilly, at sunset to the Queen.

And so, seeing that I must absolutely go, I dismissed it, as a thing
determined, from my