Note 4 — PART II.

‘“What shall I say?” replied Keyūraka; “I have no message from any of these. For when I had entrusted Patralekhā to Meghanāda, and returned, and had told of thy going to Ujjayinī, Mahāçvetā looked upwards, sighed a long, hot sigh, and saying sadly, ‘It is so then,’ returned to her own hermitage to her penance. Kādambarī, as though bereft of consciousness, ignorant of Mahāçvetā’s departure, only opened her eyes after a long time, scornfully bidding me tell Mahāçvetā; and asking Madalekhā (465) if anyone ever had done, or would do, such a deed as Candrāpīḍa, she dismissed her attendants, threw herself on her couch, veiled her head, and spent the day without speaking even to Madalekhā, who wholly shared her grief. When early next morning I went to her, she gazed at me long with tearful eyes, as if blaming me. And I, when thus looked at by my sorrowing mistress, deemed myself ordered to go, and so, without telling the princess, I have approached my lord’s feet. Therefore vouchsafe to hear attentively the bidding of Keyūraka, whose heart is anxious to save the life of one whose sole refuge is in thee. For, as by thy first coming that virgin4 forest was stirred as by the fragrant Malaya wind, so when she beheld thee, the joy of the whole world, like the spring, love entered her as though she were a red açoka creeper. (466) But now she endures great torture for thy sake.” (466–470) Then Keyūraka told at length all her sufferings, till the prince, overcome by grief, could bear it no longer and swooned.