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And I hid myself behind the image of the Moony-crested god, and watching my opportunity that none should see me, all at once I crossed the street and tried the key in the door, almost shaking with anxiety, lest after all she had played me false, by giving me at haphazard some key that would not fit. But O joy! the key turned, and the door opened, and I went through.
For she may have deserved ten thousand deaths, and yet what does it matter, if for all that she is a thing that once lost or destroyed can never be replaced, as indeed she is, resembling the Kaustubha, or the third eye of the Moony-crested god, of which in the three worlds there is only one.
But the Moony-crested god, informed of his arrival, sent him out a message, bidding him go away again, and saying: I have no leisure, since I am at this very moment busy playing with my other half, the Daughter of the Snow. And going away accordingly, Bhrigu came upon the Lord Wishnu, lying fast asleep.
And Chamu, with his master Atirupa, went into other bodies. But the soul of Babhru entered, for his crime, into that body of a camel lying yonder, which perished, as I told thee to begin with, in the desert long ago. And then, the Moony-crested stopped.
The bearded critic will see it with eyes very different from those with which it may be viewed by the fair voter with no beard upon her chin; for women, as the great god says at the end, have scant mercy on their own sex, and the heroine of the story is a strange heroine, an enigmatical Mona Lisa, so to say, who will not appeal to everybody so strongly as she does to the Moony-crested Deity, when he sums her up at the close.
Did not Shakuntalá abandon her home and her relations in the forest, to follow King Dushmanta? And did not even the Daughter of the Snow abandon, not only her father, but even her own body, for the sake of the Moony-crested god? And art thou fearful, O thou intoxicating child, to go into the dark? But what will darkness matter? nay, will not the dark itself become nectar, provided I am there?
And Párwatí said peevishly: Where is the entertainment in this foolish lump of flotsam, of which thou hast related the adventures without ever saying what it is? And the Moony-crested god said: Aha! Snowy One, do not be too sure.
And there was a special reason for Táráwalí's intelligence. And the goddess said: What was the reason? And the Moony-crested god said: It was the necessary consequence of the actions of a former birth. For in the birth before, she was a man, doomed by gati to become a woman in the next, by reason of a sin. And she said again: What sin?
Long ago there arose among the sages a dispute, as to which was the greatest of the gods. And some said, the Grandfather, and others, the Moony-crested, and others, the husband of Shrí. And finding that they could not agree, for all their disputing, they came to the conclusion, to settle the matter by experiment.
Then the Moony-crested deity said slowly: O Daughter of the Snow, thy own reflection on this beautiful illusion is the truth. And yet, well were it for the world, were its illusion limited only to its eyes, not extending, as it actually does, to its understanding also.
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