Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/47

 Indra's world, Krishna had, at the martial games, won the celestial coral tree and had planted it in his garden, a tree whose deep red blossoms shed their fragrance far around. And, she said, he who, by any chance, inhaled this perfume, remembered in his heart the long, long past, times long since vanished, out of his former lives.

"But only the saints are able to inhale this perfume here on earth," she said, and added almost roguishly, "and we two shall, I fear me, hardly become such. But what does that matter? Even if we were not Nala and Damayanti, I am sure we loved each other quite as much—whatever our names may have been. And perhaps, after all, Love and Faith are the only realities, merely changing their names and forms. They are the melodies, and we, the lutes on which they are played. The lute is shattered and another is strung, but the melody remains the same. It sounds, it is true, fuller and nobler on the one instrument than on the other, just as my new vina sounds far more beautiful than my old one. We, however, are two splendid lutes for the gods to play upon,—from which to draw the sweetest of all music."

I pressed her silently to my breast, deeply moved, as well as astonished at these strange thoughts.

But she added—and smiled gently, probably guessing what was in my mind—"Oh! I know, I really ought not to have such thoughts; our old family Brahman became quite angry on one occasion when I hinted at something of the kind; I was to pray to Krishna and leave thinking to the Brahmans. So, as I may not think, but may surely believe, I will believe that we were, really and truly, Nala and Damayanti."

And raising her hands in prayer to the asoka before us, in all its glory of shimmering blossom and flimmering leaf, she spoke to it in the words which Damayanti, wander-