Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/99

Rh seat wearing a red dress. Can’t you see her?”

Although Utonka looked hard he could see nothing whatever, and he exclaimed, “What do you say? Are you joking with me? Where is the queen sitting? I can see nothing.”

The old doorkeeper laughed and said, “Brahmachari, do not be angry with me; but you must, I suppose, be impure and that is why you cannot see the queen.”

Then the Brahmachari recollected his vision at the edge of the forest and said to himself, “Then that was not really a dream after all. Everything was real, and because I have not washed my mouth after drinking that milk, therefore I am impure and cannot see the queen. But I thought the whole thing was a dream. How wonderful the glory of this queen must be.”

So Utonka rose quickly and went away to wash. Having washed his hands and mouth the Brahmachari returned and the glory of the queen was revealed to him. She was seated on a seat which was decorated with exquisite pearls. Her dress was made of red silk. Her face was so radiant that the very gold of her ear-rings appeared dull in comparison, and the