And, beautiful as a rainbow flowering against a black cloud, the Princess returned to the carved chamber of cedar with its lattices set wide to the perfumed air of summer. Beneath and around them the ivory chalices of the frangipani blossoms and starred clouds of jasmine offered warm incense to the sun and all was calm as ecstasy, as though the world, captured by the power of Yoga, were in ecstasy, dreaming with open eyes upon Perfection. The leaves of deep-foliaged trees floated on air in absolute stillness, swimming, silent, in liquid gold, and below the shades of the gardens gleamed Rohini, she also dancing no longer as in spring, but calm and silent as the meditation of a saint, pursuing her shining way in a deep quiet. There, seated beneath a neem tree, in the green bower of its heart, the Princess beheld Siddhartha as he sat with his feet folded and his hands lying upon his knees. And as she watched, kneeling by the lattice, he stirred no more than a noble image of himself made in gold and there was that in his calm that struck her soul with fear. Then presently, gathering courage from knowledge of the gladness she bore within her, she rose, and folding the gold sari about her brows, she went with rose-leaf footsteps through the House of Joy, passing those palace rooms where the fair women talked and sang and made low music with their vinas and sitars, eating fruits cooled in blocks of ice from the mountains and laughing with each other as though joy could never cease nor death wreck youth and life, for it seemed that the secret of the house held them also and that they, like the Prince, believed that these things were immortal. But Yashodara, going through the garden ways, past groups of tall flowers bee-haunted, flickered about by rose-coloured and black butterflies, caught wafts of varying perfumes, like strains of music through the opening and closing of celestial doors, so sweet was the world that day. The jewelled peacock and his wife led forth their train of little ones to pace in deep grass and silver pheasants went daintily in the plumed shades of the bamboo and their young followed rejoicing in life and warmth and plenty, and birds hidden in high branches sang as if never they would cease, and above all floated the blue sky—a blue pure and strong as that of the infinite ocean, and life and love wandered hand in hand along the blossomed earth in sunlight like clear water. So though her secret winged her feet the Princess must needs pause here and there to share with all these living creatures the wine of joy poured from the sun’s brimming cup, and her soul gladdened within her in the youth of the world. And at last with steps light as the fall of a petal she approached the great neem tree and stood and looked into its shade.