Was it really black art, divination, or was it only a coincidence? Reason recommends the latter alternative: and yet, the contrary persuasion is not without its charm. Who knows? It may be, that the soul grows to its atmosphere as well as the body, and living in a land where dreams are realities, and all things are credible, and history is only a fairy tale: the land of the moon and the lotus and the snake, old gods and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back, unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds. POONA, _April, 1906._ CONTENTS. I. A HAUNTED BEAUTY II. A TOTAL ECLIPSE III. A FATAL KISS A Haunted Beauty. I. _May that triumphant Lord protect us, who as he stands in mysterious meditation, bathed in twilight, motionless, and ashy pale[1], with the crystal moon in his yellow hair, appears to the host of worshippers on his left, a woman, and to those on his right, a man._ [1] Being actually smeared with ashes. The god is of course Shiwa, and the allusion is to his _Ardhanari_, or half male, half female form. There lived of old, on the edge of the desert, a raja of the race of the sun. And like that sun reflected at midday in the glassy depths of the Manasa lake, he had an image of himself in the form of a son[2], who exactly resembled him in every particular, except age. And he gave him the name of Aja, for he said: He is not another, but my very self that