be blamed, if thy beauty still beguiles me as it did long ago? And yet, dost thou accuse me as if I were a criminal? O blue black bee, what is this behaviour, that thou seekest as it were to pick a quarrel with the poor red lotus who loves thee but too well? And she smiled through her tears, and exclaimed: Ah I but in spite of thee, I will adore thee, whether thou wilt or no. Ha! and I will compel thee to remember, and force my way through every barrier and obstacle till I reach the recollection[26] in the bottom of thy heart. O canst thou not remember the days of long ago, when my now despised beauty was a joy to thee, and my hair a very net to snare thy willing soul, and my eyes were more to thee than any diamonds, and these two arms were thy prison and thy chain, and this agitated bosom was thy pillow on which I lulled thee to slumber with the music of this very voice. Hast thou really forgotten the nectar of my kiss? hast thou actually forgotten thy own insatiable thirst? Ah! but if thou hast forgotten, I have not; and the innumerable multitudes of thy too delicious kisses come back to me, singing in my memory, and whispering in my soul like the lisping of the sea. Hark! Dost thou not hear them also, those voices of a former birth? [26] The reader should remember that in Sanskrit, _love_ and _recollection_ are the same word. XI. And as Aja gazed at her, stunned and almost overcome by the pathos of her irresistible appeal, and as it were swept from his feet by the surge of her passion, suddenly she seized his left hand with her right, and stood, grasping it as if convulsively, with the other hand raised, and bending her head as if to listen. And he listened, and lo! there sounded in his ears a murmur resembling that of the sea, mixed with faint strains of music, and echoes of indistinguishable singing voices coming as it were from the ends of the earth. And a shudder ran through him, as she turned, and looked at him as if in ecstasy, with eyes that saw nothing, murmuring in an eager voice that chanted and charmed his ear like the rushing of a stream: Dost thou hear the voices, calling thee over to the other shore? For the sea is the sea of separation, and the other shore is our former birth. Far away over the setting sun hides the red land[27] of our old sweet love. And I can take thee back to it, out of this dim and dingy wood. Only I can carry thee back to the land beyond the sunset hill, where love is lying dead. Over the sea where monsters lurk, and great pearls grow in sunless deeps, I can carry thee back again to the land of long ago. Never a ship with a silken sail could rock thee over across the waves so well as I will waft thee there on the swell of this soft breast. Never a breeze from the sandal hill could ferry thee over a silent sea so gently as will I, by breathing into thy raptured ear tales of thy old forgotten past with fond and fragrant lips. What! art thou still oblivious of that old delicious birth? Dost thou never behold in dreams the paradise of our little hut,