Spring was now far along, and March at an end. It was the time of year when all young things were at the fulness of their vitality; for in India the late spring, before the coming of intolerable heat, is the real summer of the growing world. All nature was filled with vivid life. Each lightest thread of zephyr carried with it a shower of golden pollen, blown for floral marriage-beds. Birds and beasts had long since mated. And by night the bulbul in the champak bushes sang to his mate throbbing songs of the children that were coming to them from the eggs over which she brooded. Lutes in the hands of poets attuned themselves to the triumph of love; and, under the universal spell, only Fidá could not rise to it. On the afternoon of the third of April, the Arab had been with Ahalya for a moment only, showing himself too miserable to linger at her side; and she had sent him sadly away to rest alone, and perhaps sleep back into a semblance of life. Left to herself, Ahalya found it impossible to be still. She was young, and there was no curse on her to keep the summer from flowing in her veins. Neila was asleep somewhere in the zenana. She must have some one to speak to; and, even as she pondered, the young Bhavani bounded in to her with a fascinating and unwise proposal. Some slave, he said, had told him that this year, in the water-palace pool, there was a blossom of blue lotos, the flower said to be found only in paradise. Would she not go out with him to see if it were really there? Ahalya seized on the idea with alacrity. She longed to get into the living world; and Bhavani was delighted with her enthusiasm. The Ranee veiled herself, and then, calling no one to attend them, they hurried into the little courtyard, out of it into the north wing, and so across a corner of the great court and into the road to the water palace. And, as Fate had decreed, Ragunáth, sitting at council in the great audience chamber, caught, through its open doorway, one fleeting glimpse of Ahalya’s veiled figure, recognized it instantly with the divining eyes of desire, and began to calculate how soon he should be able to follow her.