noon
And yet it hung , so to say , always just before my eyes , like a picture on the wall , so that often I used to talk to it , as if it were alive , as I sat . And yet it never answered , looking back at me in silence with strange kind eyes , and seeming to listen to me gazing at it wistfully , and playing on my lute . And this was a woman , that had come to me in a dream . For but a little while before I quarrelled with my father , I was lying , on a day , at noon , when I had been following a quarry in the jungle till I ached with fatigue , resting on a river bank : and so as I lay , unawares I fell asleep . And I thought that I wandered through a palace that I had never seen before , till suddenly I came upon a terrace that stood on the very margin of a lake , that was filled with myriads of lotuses , all turned red by the rays of the setting sun , which stood never moving on the top of a low hill , as if it were watching me to see what I should do , before it went away . And there was such a strange silence that I began to be afraid , as if of something that was just about to happen , without knowing what . And so as we all stood waiting in the dusk , I and the lotuses and the sun , all at once I heard behind me a voice like a _ kokila _ , saying quietly : I have kept thee a long while waiting : wilt thou forgive ?