She went away when the night was about to wane.

My mind tried to console me by saying, "All is vanity."

I felt angry and said, "That unopened letter with her name on it, and this
palm-leaf fan bordered with red silk by her own hands, are they not real?"

The day passed, and my friend came and said to me, "Whatever is good is
true, and can never perish."

"How do you know?" I asked impatiently; "was not this body good which is
now lost to the world?"


As a fretful child hurting its own mother, I tried to wreck all the
shelters that ever I had, in and about me, and cried, "This world is
treacherous."

Suddenly I felt a voice saying--"Ungrateful!"

I looked out of the window, and a reproach seemed to come from the
star-sprinkled night,--"You pour out into the void of my absence your faith
in the truth that I came!"



23


The river is grey and the air dazed with blown sand.