So as he listened, Aja's soul was filled as it were with a mingled
essence of wonder and irresolution and sheeny beauty and singing sound.
For the tone of her voice was like a lute, and before his eyes hovered a
picture of waving arms and witching curves, out of which her dreamy
eyes, from which he could not take his own, seemed as it were to speak
to him of love reproachful and old regret. And all at once, with a
violent effort, he roused himself as if from sleep with open eyes. And
he shifted his sword to the other hand, and passed his right across his
brow. And he said, in some confusion: O thou strange and sweet-tongued
woman, certain this much is, that I am filled by thee with emotion that
I do not understand. And yet I know not what to think, or even say. For
even apart from the promptings of a former birth, thy beauty and thy
haunting voice, which I seem as it were to have heard before, are quite
sufficient to rouse emotion even in a stone, much more in a man of flesh
and blood.
Then she shook her head sadly, looking at him with glistening eyes; and
she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness: Ah! this is as I thought,
and the instinct of thy former birth is clouded over and effaced, by
thy meeting with this other woman in the morning of this very day. Alas!
how small, how very small, the interval of space and time that divides
the paradise of joy from the dungeon of despair! For had this our
reunion been sooner by only a single day, I should have caught thy heart
before it had been occupied by this all too fortunate other woman, who
now holds it like a fortress, garrisoned by a prior claim. But what is
this priority of claim? Can she, who by thy own confession has known
thee only a single day, dare to dispute priority with the darling of thy
former birth[15]? Wilt thou break thy faith with me, to keep thy faith
with her? Aye! and wilt thou, after all, gain so much by the exchange?
Is she beautiful, then, this other woman? But I am beautiful, too? And
she stood up, and looked at Aja with her head thrown back and proud
eyes, as though to challenge his condemnation of her own consummate
beauty. And she said again: Is she, then, this other beauty, either
more faithful or more beautiful than I am? Speak, and tell me if thou
canst, in what I am inferior, or why I am to be despised, in comparison
with her.
[15] Though, in Europe, this insidious appeal might lack
force, it is otherwise in India: whose millions doubt their
former birth no more than they doubt their own existence.
It is not long since a woman in Cutch burned herself with
her own dead son, because, she averred, he had been her
husband in her former birth.
And Aja looked at her again, and felt abashed, and half ashamed, he knew
not why. And he murmured to himself: She does not lie: for beautiful she
is indeed, and need not fear comparison with any woman in the world. And
it may be, she is partly right, and if I had met her yesterday, before
my heart was full, she would have had little difficulty in entering in
and capturing it, almost without resistance. And he stood looking at her
silently, uncertain what to say or do, and half inclined to pity her,
and half afraid of her and of himself, admiring her against his will,
and as it were confessing by his very silence the power of her appeal.
For notwithstanding the preoccupation of his heart, his youth and his
sex became as it were allies with her against his resolution, compelling
him to acknowledge the supremacy of the cunning god, and the spell of
feminine attraction incarnate in her form.
And she stood there before him, for a little, with beauty as it were
heightened by resentful reproach of the slighting of itself, and the
disregard of its tried affection. And then all at once she sank down
upon the ground, as if she were tired, and remained sitting among the
poppies, with her chin resting on her left knee, which she embraced with
her arms, watching him, and as it were, waiting with humility and
patience for a decision in her case. And every now and then, she closed
her eyes, and opened them again, as if to make sure that he was there.
And Aja looked round in the silence, at the poppies and the lotuses, and
the great owls that seemed to watch him, and back again at her. And his
head began to whirl, and he muttered to himself: Is this a dream, and
what does it all mean? And is she returning to the condition of an
image, disgusted by my coldness and disdain? And what is to be done? And
he looked at her face, deprived, by the closing of their lids, of the
moon of her eyes, and resting like a mask upon its chin. And he said
within himself: Her eyebrows move, as if they were alive. And he felt as
it were unable to look away from them: and at last, annoyed with
himself, he closed his eyes also as though to escape their persecution.