And he in great astonishment:
“Forgotten? In what age to come shall you not still be loveliest and gentlest, Queen of the whole earth for beauty? Then, as now, shall men come to happy Kapila because the city holds the most beautiful as the shell its pearl. How should we be forgotten?”
And for a moment cold fear crept by her like the silent passing of a snake, compelling her to remember that the truth was shut from those dear eyes, light of her life,—and she brushed it from her and said laughing.
“True—who should forget us? I dream sometimes that of all names in the world my lord’s shall be greatest, uplifted, splendid, like that great star throbbing upon the topmost peak of all, and men shall bow down and do homage to it not only in the land of the Sakyas and in Maghada and Kosala, but in the wide great world among strange people who send us their treasures but whose very names we cannot utter.”
“And you have dreamed this, beloved? And how?”
“I have dreams that beat in my ears and their sound goes over the mountains, north and south and east and west. And the sun is dimmed with fumes of incense offered to a great King. And I see golden palaces like the sands of all the rivers for number, with my lord sitting throned beneath them in gold—palaces innumerable, and flowers cast in heaps to exhale their perfume. And all this in my lord’s honour. This have I dreamed four times.”
And he said, slowly:
“It is my dream also. Certainly the Gods come in dream. But who can say? See, beloved, how the night, mother of men, brings us her dark reposes lulling all things to sleep. There is no moon, but strange spirits as white as moonbeams moving among the trees. Sing low to me, beloved, sing low. I would not see their eyes—they look upon me with thoughts I cannot read. Sing to me—fill my eyes with the love in yours. Sing!”
And she took her sitar of ebony and ivory and sang softly as Rohini that made a silver music at their feet.
But there was a seal upon her lips that she might not sing of love though love was beside her, for the awe of the mountains was heavy on them and the listening of night. Therefore she sang these words, but no louder than a bee hovering about a flower.