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CHAPTER III. DANCING AND MUSIC.

IN a spacious ediﬁce at Monghyr, lived the brothers Swarup Chand Jagatshetth and Mahatab Chand Jagatshetth. Hundreds of lights were burning in the house at night. In the cool of a vaulted apartment overlaid with marble, countless lights were reﬂected from the jewellery of a dancing—girl. Water accumulates water, and the bright accumulates brightness. In the dazzling marble columns, in the brilliant musmud embroidered with gold and pearls, in the scent-holders set with sparkling diamonds and precious jewels, in the bright massive pearl-strings hanging round the Shetths’ necks, and in the dancing girl’s jewellery on the forearm, throat, hair and ears, the light was ﬂashing and strains of delicious music ﬂoated across the room, mingling the bright with the sweet. The bright mingled with the sweet! When the moon rises in the blue sky at night, then the bright mingles with the sweet; when lightning glances shoot from beauty’s languishing eyes, soft as the nelumbo bathed in water, then the bright mingles with the sweet; when the blooming lotus—cluster reposes on the clear blue water of a tank pierced with the golden shafts of the rising sun, when the long rays of Phoebus slant on the ripplets of blue waterand inﬂame theliquid drops onthelotus leaves, when Dan Sol awakens the strains of the water-fowls, part the lips of the water-lily and peep in, then the bright mingles with the sweet; and again when the sun tumbles about in the diamond-cut anklets round the feet of your lady, then the bright mingles with the sweet. Once more when at the fall of day the clouds chase the dying sun in the sky ever eluding their grasp, then the bright mingles with the sweet; and yet again when your good lady