the desire of their hearts. Tears filled their eyes, and their life
seemed to long for a death that would be its consummation.

Shekhar forgot his audience, forgot the trial of his strength with a
rival. He stood alone amid his thoughts that rustled and quivered round
him like leaves in a summer breeze, and sang the Song of the Flute. He
had in his mind the vision of an image that had taken its shape from a
shadow, and the echo of a faint tinkling sound of a distant footstep.

He took his seat. His hearers trembled with the sadness of an
indefinable delight, immense and vague, and they forgot to
applaud him. As this feeling died away Pundarik stood up before the
throne and challenged his rival to define who was this Lover and who was
the Beloved. He arrogantly looked around him, he smiled at his
followers and then put the question again : "Who is Krishna, the lover,
and who is Radha, the beloved?"

Then he began to analyse the roots of those names,--and various
interpretations of their meanings. He brought before the bewildered
audience all the intricacies of the different schools of metaphysics
with consummate skill. Each letter of those names he divided from its
fellow, and then pursued them with a relentless logic till they fell to
the dust in confusion, to be caught up again and restored to a meaning
never before imagined by the subtlest of word-mongers.

The pandits were in ecstasy; they applauded vociferously ; and the crowd
followed them, deluded into the certainty that they had witnessed, that
day, the last shred of the curtains of Truth torn to pieces before their
eyes by a prodigy of intellect. The performance of his tremendous feat
so delighted them that they forgot to ask themselves if there was any