departure could not possibly remain hidden from my enemy Satagira. After but a few hours' travel, however, I halted in a large village and had my caravan go into night quarters there, to the no small delight of my people. Shortly before sunset, I myself mounted a fresh horse, and, wrapped in the coarse mantle of one of my servants, rode back to Kosambi, over the road we had just come.
Night had fallen, and it was quite dark by the time I reached the sinsapa wood. As I carefully guided my horse between the tree-trunks, I was welcomed by the splendid odour of the blossoms of the night-lotus, which rose to greet me from the ancient Krishna pond. Very soon the crumbling roof of the temple, with its swarming images of the gods, and its jagged and tangled outlines, began to show against the starlit heavens. I was at the appointed place. Scarcely had I swung myself out of the saddle when my friends were at my side. With a cry of rapture, Vasitthi and I rushed into one another's arms, half beside ourselves with the joy of meeting again, and all my recollections now are of caresses, stammered words of endearment, and assurances of love and fidelity, which absorbed us utterly, till I was rudely startled by the unexpected feeling of a wing that softly fanned my check as it brushed lightly past. This, with the hoot of an owl, and the hateful clang of a cracked bronze bell which immediately followed, had the effect of completely rousing me from my love-trance. Medini had pulled the old prayer-bell, and so scared the owl from the recess in which she dwelt. The good-hearted girl had done it, not so much to summon the saintly woman, as because she saw that formidable person already coming out of the sanctuary, plainly indignant that she should hear voices within the sacred precincts, although no one had either rung or knocked.
