underneath which we so often wandered, holding each other in a close embrace. "The Terrace of the Sorrowless" it was called, from those trees which the poets name the "Sorrowless Tree," and sometimes "Heartsease." I have never elsewhere seen such magnificently grown specimens. The spear-shaped sleepless leaves gleamed in the rays of the moon and whispered in the gentle night-wind, and in between them glowed the golden, orange, and scarlet flowers, although we were as yet only at the beginning of the Vasanta season. But then, O brother, how should these trees not have stood in all their glory, seeing that, as thou knowest, the asoka at once opens his blossoms if his roots be but touched by the foot of a beautiful maiden.
One wonderful night, when the moon was at its full—to me it seems as if it were but yesterday—I stood beneath them with the dear cause of their early bloom, my sweet Vasitthi. Beyond the deep shadow of the ravine, we gazed far out into the land. We saw before us the two rivers wind like silver ribbons away over the vast plain and unite at that most sacred spot, which people call the "Triple-lock," because they believe that the "Heavenly Gunga" joins them there as third—for by this beautiful name, they, in that land, call the wonderful heavenly glow which we in the South know as the Milky Way—and Vasitthi, raising her hand, pointed to where it shone far above the tree-tops.
Then we spoke of the mighty Himavat[1] in the North, whence the beloved Gunga flows down; the Himavat, whose snow-covered peaks are the habitations of the gods and whose immense forests and deep chasms have afforded shelter to the great ascetics. But with even greater pleasure did I follow to where it takes its rise, the course of the Jumna.
"Oh," I called out, "had I but a fairy bark of mother-of-
- ↑ Ancient name of the Himalayas.
