and drunk with each other's presence, shut within the little hut like a pair of bees in a nectared lotus. And I was standing like an idol, dressed like the queen of a _chakrawarti_[12], loaded with gold on wrists and feet, with great pearls wound about my neck; and thou wert contemplating me, thy creature[13], with intoxication, and hard indeed it was to tell, which of us two was the idol, and which was the devotee. And as we woke up from a kiss that lasted like infinity, lo! my father stood before us. And he said slowly: Abandoned daughter, that hast forgot thy duty in thy passion for this King's son, become what thou hast represented, an idol[14] of stone on the wall of a ruined temple far away: and thou, her guilty lover, fall again into another birth, and be separated from thy guilty love. Then being besought by us, to fix some period to the curse, he said again: When ye two shall meet again, and thy husband in his curiosity shall touch thee with his finger, she shall regain her woman's state, and be as she was before. And now all this has come about, exactly as he said. And I have found thee once again, only to find alas! alas! that thou hast left thy heart behind thee in that old delicious birth. [11] In Sanskrit, hunting and wooing can be mixed up together by plays on words. [12] An emperor. Hindoo idols are dressed and undressed, like dolls, by their officiating priests. [13] She means, he was her Creator. [14] The Hindoos have no word, because they have not the idea, of an _idol_. They call it a _god_ or an _image_. Our word _idol_ implies the antagonism to paganism involved in Christianity, and no two books are more alike than S. Augustine's _City of God_ and Ward's _Hindoo Mythology_. V. So as he listened, Aja's soul was filled as it were with a mingled essence of wonder and irresolution and sheeny beauty and singing sound. For the tone of her voice was like a lute, and before his eyes hovered a picture of waving arms and witching curves, out of which her dreamy eyes, from which he could not take his own, seemed as it were to speak to him of love reproachful and old regret. And all at once, with a violent effort, he roused himself as if from sleep with open eyes. And he shifted his sword to the other hand, and passed his right across his brow. And he said, in some confusion: O thou strange and sweet-tongued woman, certain this much is, that I am filled by thee with emotion that I do not understand. And yet I know not what to think, or even say. For even apart from the promptings of a former birth, thy beauty and thy haunting voice, which I seem as it were to have heard before, are quite