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Updated: May 23, 2025
For he says he is a deity, who wishes to renew his old acquaintance with another. And now, the Mahárájá is the judge. And Atirupa laughed, and he said: If he is a deity indeed, why is he waiting at a gate? And yet, who knows? For the deity presents himself in many forms, and who knows how or when?
O Babhru, why didst thou not die also, before they brought her back? Chamu, Chamu, did Atirupa give you Aranyání, to kiss her dead body on the sand? And all at once, Babhru began to tremble like a leaf. And he exclaimed: Aranyání, Aranyání! And suddenly she fell down and began to kiss his feet.
Wilt thou actually wait to understand, till a little Atirupa comes, to spit, exactly like his father, in thy face? And as Babhru listened, all at once the words of Chamu as he went away rose up and stood before him, as if they had lain waiting, and as it were sleeping in his soul, till roused into recollection by her own.
And he kissed her very carefully on both eyes, and he said: Indeed thou art. Then she said softly: And dost thou then imagine that delay is any easier to me than to thyself? Know, that I had difficulty, in coming even when I did. For I had first to get rid of someone else, in order to come at all. And Atirupa said: Thy old lover, of whom thou hast told me?
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, Maháráj: and as I told thee it would be, so it is: thou dost not believe.
And yet, only this very morning did I learn, how nearly I had lost thee: since thy servant that saw me in the wood, and was the cause of thy coming, came within an ace of perishing himself, before he ever got away to tell. And Atirupa said: How? And Aranyání told him. And then she said: And now I fear for thee also: for should Babhru chance to see thee, his reason will desert him.
And what then will be my fate, if I follow him in spite of all, only to discover, that just as I left Babhru in the lurch, so I myself shall be abandoned, it may be, for some other woman's sake? And at the thought, she shuddered, and grew cold all over, and turned suddenly paler than a waning moon. And Atirupa saw it, and was puzzled, understanding nothing of what was passing in her soul.
And Atirupa gazed at him with curiosity and wonder, and he exclaimed, as if in jest: O Maheshwara, there cannot be a doubt of thy divinity: for surely, if thou wert not Maheshwara himself, he might be jealous of thee, for thy height and thy ashes and thy hair, and that third eye painted in the very middle of thy brow, looking as if it were just about to open and consume me again.
So he stood a long while, sinking, as he looked at her, deeper and deeper into the blackness of despair, and resembling one that waits in darkness for a light that still flickers to go out and disappear. And suddenly he said to himself: She is right. For fate in the form of Atirupa has destroyed her and her happiness, and mine.
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.
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