peerless beauty: and now here is another, rising as it were from the dead, and seeming to expect me. And he continued standing silent, gazing at her, sword in hand. And after a while, she said: What! is my form, then, so frightful as to rob thee of thy tongue? Or art thou going to use that sword against me? Speak: but in the meanwhile, let me see, whether I have lost the use of my limbs, as thou hast that of thy tongue, after so long a sleep. And she leaped from her little pedestal, and moved a little way here and there, waving her beautiful arms about: and after a while, she came back, and sat down just before him, on one of the fallen pillars that were lying about the ground. And all the while Aja watched her, as if fascinated by a serpent, saying within himself: She moves like nothing I ever saw, save a panther or a gliding snake[9]. And then, all at once, she again put up one eyebrow, and said to him with a smile: Must I, then, actually tell thee, that I am Natabhrukuti[10]? Then Aja said: O lady, it is obvious. For thy bent brow would plant arrows even in the heart of the Great Ascetic. And she said again: O husband, is this thy welcome, after so long a separation? [9] It is a wonderful thing to see a cobra move. Nothing can describe it. [10] That is, _the Beauty of the arched eyebrows_. (Pronounce _Nat_- to rhyme with _but_.) And Aja bounded, as if bitten by a snake. And he exclaimed: Thy husband! What! Am I then thy husband also? Does thy whole sex want to get me for a husband? But O thou beauty of bending brows, how can he be thy husband, that never saw thee in his life before? And only this morning, I was still wifeless, and a day has not elapsed, since I became another's husband. And he stopped short, again confounded at the effect of his own words. For hardly had they passed his lips, when Natabhrukuti started up, swelling with rage and convulsed with fury, with eyes that blazed like fiery stars. And she exclaimed: Never! never! Never shall she possess thee, nor any other than I myself. And then, like a flash of lightning, her rage vanished as quickly as it came. And she looked at him with imploring eyes, and said: Slay me now, with thy long bright sword, and send me back to that nonentity out of which thou hast just recalled me: but speak not of another woman in front of me. Alas! and am I all forgotten? And tears rolled from her great blue eyes, and fell like suppliants at her feet. And Aja put up his left hand, and tugged at his hair in the extremity of his amazement. And he said: O thou strange offended lady, I am utterly bewildered, and resemble one that has lost his way at midnight in a wood. And thy anger and thy grief are alike altogether incomprehensible. How can I possibly have forgotten one, whom as I just now told thee, I never saw in my life before? Then she said: Nay, not in this life, but the last. For I was the wife of thy former birth. Then Aja laughed, and he said: O beauty, who remembers his former birth? For like every other man, and like my ancestor the sun, I have