And Uma ran to her mother, wrathful.... “An old Priest-man fell at my feet Mother,” she said, “and said unto me words which are not fit to be heard by me before my maidens.”
So Uma’s Father went out forthwith, and finding Narod—for he it was, the Mischief Man turned Priest in old-age, he heard the wondrous God-news about his daughter.
Shiva, it seemed lived a life of prayer and fasting—close by in the Cave of the Cow’s mouth.
“Send Uma to tend him,” said Narod, “and haply he will look and love, and they be man and wife once more.”
Thus Uma was sent to Shiva, and tended him night and day; and the woman’s love for the thing that she tended, grew in her heart.
But Shiva, full of self-pity for loss of a jewel which he might better have preserved (for this was his thought), saw not that same jewel lying burnished and re-beautified in the dust at his feet. And Uma’s heart was sad, till even the Great God himself was moved to pity, and sent the little God of Love to wake Shiva the Monk from his trance of bead-telling.
Then, fearfully—for is not Shiva the Destroyer himself?—went the Godling of the arched bow, and hiding in the bracken he shot forth his arrows—not without success. And Shiva, furious, saw one upturned foot in flight, and the fire from his eye burnt up the thing he saw, so that Kama Deva comes no more among the haunts of men.
But, and when his anger was dead, he looked up, and his eyes being opened, he beheld Uma, knowing her for Durga his own possession.
And so, once more was fulfilled the destiny of a woman.
“But for three days in every year does Uma go back to her parents and her swanlets in the mountains of Snow; and this journeying of Uma is always at Durga-pooja time when we make feast for many days to worship the Ten-handed.”