So Bakawali the Apsaras suffered once more the agony of fire, and danced before the gods, not only as she had danced before, but so that the eyes of all beholding her became dim in watching the varying curves of her limbs, the dizzy speed of her white feet, the tossing light of her hair. And the charm of her beauty bewitched the tongues of all there, so that the cry, "O flower-body!" fainted into indistinguishable whispers, and the fingers of the musicians were numbed with languor, and the music weakened tremblingly, quiveringly, dying down into an amorous swoon.
And out of the great silence broke the soft thunder of Indra's pleased voice: "O Bakawali! ask me for whatever thou wilt, and it shall be accorded thee. By the Trimurti, I swear!"... But she, kneeling before him, with bosom still fluttering from the dance, murmured: "I pray thee, divine One, only that thou wilt allow me to depart hence, and dwell with this mortal whom I love during all the years of life allotted unto him." And she gazed upon the youth Taju'l-Mulk.
But Indra, hearing these words, and looking also at Taju'l-Mulk, frowned so darkly that gloom filled all the courts of heaven. And he said: "Thou, also, son of man, wouldst doubtless make the same prayer; yet think not thou mayst take hence an Apsaras like Bakawali to make her thy wife without grief to thyself! And as for thee, O shameless Bakawali, thou mayst depart with him, indeed, since I have sworn; but I swear also to thee that from thy waist unto thy feet thou shalt remain a woman of marble for the space of twelve years.... Now let thy lover rejoice in thee!"...
...And Bakawali was placed in the chamber of a mined pagoda, deep-buried within the forests of Ceylon; and there did she pass the years, sitting upon a seat of stone, herself stone from feet to waist. But Taju'l-Mulk found her and ministered unto her as to the statue of a goddess; and he waited for her through the long years.
The ruined pavement, grass-disjointed, trembled to the passing tread of wild elephants; often did tigers peer through the pillared entrance, with eyes flaming like emeralds; but Taju'l-Mulk was never weary nor afraid, and he waited by her through all the weary and fearful years.
Gem-eyed lizards clung and wondered; serpents watched with marvelous chrysolite gaze; vast spiders wove their silvered lace above the head of the human statue; sunset-feathered birds, with huge and flesh-colored beaks, hatched their young in peace under the eyes of Bakawali.... Until it came to pass at the close of the eleventh year—Taju'l-Mulk being in search of food—that the great ruin fell, burying the helpless Apsaras under a ponderous and monstrous destruction beyond the power of any single arm to remove.... Then Taju'l-Mulk wept; but he still waited, knowing that the immortals could not die.
And out of the shapeless mass of ruins there soon grew a marvelous tree, graceful, dainty, round-limbed like a woman; and Taju'l-Mulk watched it waxing tall under the mighty heat of the summer, bearing flowers lovelier than that narcissus whose blossoms have been compared to the eyes of Oriental girls, and rosy fruit as smooth-skinned as maiden flesh.
So the twelfth year passed. And with the passing of its last moon, a great fruit parted itself, and therefrom issued the body of a woman, slender and exquisite, whose supple limbs had been folded up within the fruit as a butterfly is folded up within its chrysalis, comely as an Indian dawn, deeper-eyed than ever woman of earth—being indeed an immortal, being an Apsaras—Bakawali reincarnated for her lover, and relieved from the malediction of the gods.