But poor Dehra sat in the Rakshas' palace crying as if her heart would break. "Nala, Nala! where are you?" she cried over and over again, but no one answered her.
Then she went out of the palace, past the tank where the red lotus flowers lay on the clear water, saying to herself, "Some one has stolen her."
Then she looked at the golden letters over the gate.
"Follow her, Dehra; you shall see
How kind and cruel Fate can be."
"Half of it is surely true," she said aloud, and suddenly, from behind her, the jackal asked, "Which half is true?"
"Fate has not been kind yet, so it must be the last part," sobbed Dehra.
"I think that is very ungrateful of you," said the jackal. "Here you have been living comfortably in a beautiful palace for some time. I am not sure that it is nice of you to complain that you have had no luck at all."
Dehra began to cry.
"But that is not what I came to tell you," the jackal added. "The Rakshas is on his way home and you will have to go away."