Arjuna
My love, have you no home where kind hearts are waiting for your
return? A home which you once made sweet with your gentle
service and whose light went out when you left it for this
wilderness?
Chitra
Why these questions? Are the hours of unthinking pleasure over?
Do you not know that I am no more than what you see before you?
For me there is no vista beyond. The dew that hangs on the tip
of a Kinsuka petal has neither name nor destination. It offers
no answer to any question. She whom you love is like that
perfect bead of dew.
Arjuna
Has she no tie with the world? Can she be merely like a fragment
of heaven dropped on the earth through the carelessness of a
wanton god?
Chitra
Yes.
Arjuna
Ah, that is why I always seem about to lose you. My heart is
unsatisfied, my mind knows no peace. Come closer to me,
unattainable one! Surrender yourself to the bonds of name and
home and parentage. Let my heart feel you on all sides and live
with you in the peaceful security of love.
Chitra
Why this vain effort to catch and keep the tints of the clouds,
the dance of the waves, the smell of the flowers?
Arjuna
Mistress mine, do not hope to pacify love with airy nothings.
Give me something to clasp, something that can last longer than
pleasure, that can endure even through suffering.
Chitra
Hero mine, the year is not yet full, and you are tired already!
Now I know that it is Heaven's blessing that has made the
flower's term of life short. Could this body of mine have
drooped and died with the flowers of last spring it surely would
have died with honour. Yet, its days are numbered, my love.
Spare it not, press it dry of honey, for fear your beggar's heart
come back to it again and again with unsated desire, like a
thirsty bee when summer blossoms lie dead in the dust.