“Send Uma to tend him,” said Narod, “and haply he will look and love, and they be man and wife once more.” Thus Uma was sent to Shiva, and tended him night and day; and the woman’s love for the thing that she tended, grew in her heart. But Shiva, full of self-pity for loss of a jewel which he might better have preserved (for this was his thought), saw not that same jewel lying burnished and re-beautified in the dust at his feet. And Uma’s heart was sad, till even the Great God himself was moved to pity, and sent the little God of Love to wake Shiva the Monk from his trance of bead-telling. Then, fearfully--for is not Shiva the Destroyer himself?--went the Godling of the arched bow, and hiding in the bracken he shot forth his arrows--not without success. And Shiva, furious, saw one upturned foot in flight, and the fire from his eye burnt up the thing he saw, so that Kama Deva comes no more among the haunts of men. But, and when his anger was dead, he looked up, and his eyes being opened, he beheld Uma, knowing her for Durga his own possession. And so, once more was fulfilled the destiny of a woman. “But for three days in every year does Uma go back to her parents and her swanlets in the mountains of Snow; and this journeying of Uma is always at _Durga-pooja_ time when we make feast for many days to worship the Ten-handed.” In the silence which fell upon us after this story, she of many years was heard to yawn, while all the women snapped their fingers till her jaws met again. From Shiva’s Temple gleaming white among the yellow-green of the date palms came the sound of the _pooja_ bell--some one, a woman probably, praying for her Lord to the Lord of Killing and Cursing. Clear against the gray-blue sky stood the cross-crowned spire of the Christian Cathedral; and almost at our doors, rang out the prayer-keeper’s call to the faithful Moslem: “There is no God so great as God.”... “There is no God so great as--my God.” It is what we are all saying; and it makes at once the strength and the tragedy of human lives. “No God so great as my God.” What different things we mean when we say that--we of the bustling outside world. The Hindu woman means one thing only.... “No God so great as my God.” That was the lesson each was taking from the story of Durga and Uma. Did not almost every fable and legend chant that chorus? “No God so Great.”... In punishment may be sometimes, or in penitence (see the miracle of the Destroyer himself turned monk for Durga)--but most of all in _graciousness_.... “He knew Uma for her who went to Dokhio’s feast, and yet he forgave,” said Boho Rani, “Oh! the wonder.”... But the Mother of Nagendra laughed, sure of her possession.... “The Godling of the arrows was not really burnt,” she said, “the flying foot belonged to Kama’s sheaf-bearer and rival, the less-than-godlet of unlawful love.”...