AND he lay all night on his bed of leaves, repenting of his doubts: and in the morning he arose before the sun, and went out, and watched the eastern sky changing colour like an opal as the night drove away before the dawn: but the chétí never came. And as the day grew older, the King grew paler, for he said: Can it be that she means to leave me another day alone? And then at last, when the sun was already high in the heaven, he looked, and saw her coming slowly towards him, with a purple flower of the Kadamba in her hand. And she seemed in his eyes like the nectar of reconciliation in feminine form. And she came up to him and said: My mistress sends her lord, by these unworthy hands, a flower, and if his slumbers have been light, it is well with her.
Then she said: O King, this unmannerly bee has disgraced me in thine eyes, and caused me to forget the reserve of a maiden: and now it is time that I were gone. And she laid the flower at the King's feet, and ran away without looking behind her, and vanished in the trees. But the King stooped and picked up the flower. And he said: O glorious flower, I will preserve thee for ever, even after thou art faded: for thou vast the occasion of the onslaught of this incomparable bee, which led my dear chétí to forget her caution and
48:q This is a formula. The special business of kings was like that of the knight in the Middle Ages, to protect the distressed (sharanágata).
