And Chamu said: O Maharaj, who can describe the indescribable? There are things that cannot be described, but only seen: hardly even then to be believed, when gazed at by the eye. Can anything imitate and reproduce the beauty of the blue lotus, but the pool in which it is reflected? The wandering wind may carry, like myself, its fragrance to a distance, but cannot perform the work that belongs only to the mirror of the pool. So take counsel of the wind, and go thyself, and become the pool. And Atirupa laughed joyfully, and he exclaimed: O Chamu, thou art certainly bewitched, and this wood-nymph has cast over thee a spell: turning thee into a very breeze of sandalwood from Malaya. And Chamu said: Laugh, Maharaj: and as I told thee it would be, so it is: thou dost not believe. But when thou hast seen her eyes, and when thou hast heard her voice, and when thou hast gazed at her, as I did, coming straight towards thee, walking, thou wilt laugh no longer: for the scorn incarnate in the pride of her great breast will make thee giddy, and the roundness of her hips will steal thy heart and burn it to a cinder, and the jingle of her anklets will haunt thy ears, as it does mine, like the sound of a stream, keeping time to the dance of her two little feet as they come towards thee, till thou wilt find thyself wishing that some strange magic might keep on drawing thee back for ever, so only that thou couldst go on gazing, as she kept on coming, like an everlasting incarnation of the rapture of anticipation of touching and caressing what it maddens thee to see. Maharaj, I tell thee, that were the three great worlds but one colossal oyster shell, she is its very pearl. And like a cunning diver, I have been down into the sea, and seen it, and now I can take thee where it is, to see it for thyself. And as I think, thou wilt discover, she is a quarry to thy taste, who will save thee from the necessity of seeking for others in the ashes of thy town. II THE THIRST OF AN ANTELOPE I _Gazelle, gazelle, dost understand Why the old skulls grin in this silent land?_ My feet are fleet, and I drink at will, There is something blue in the distance still. II _But the old skulls grin in the silent waste, Gazelle, gazelle, make haste, make haste!_ I travel fast, and I fear no ill, There is something blue in the distance still. III _The old skulls grinned in the silent sand, They beckoned her like a bony hand: Gazelle, gazelle, hast drunk thy fill? Is there something blue in the distance, still?_ KURANGI. I A DAPPLED DAWN I A DAPPLED DAWN I