But Yashowati turned, and looked at him with steady eyes.  And she said:  My husband, for such indeed thou art, the first that I have ever chosen[18], and the last that shall ever claim my hand:  dost thou think that I would have so far forgotten the reserve that is becoming to a maiden of my caste, as to offer myself like an abhisarika, but that I know, as thou canst not know it, the absolute and utterly inevitable certainty of thy doom, and that this is the very last day we shall spend together, though it is also the very first?  And Aja looked at her with affection:  and he laughed again.  And he said:  Sweet wife, since thou art so very certain, then as it must be, let it be.  What care I for to-morrow, if I am with thee all to-day?  Know, that but an hour ago, when first I saw thee, I would have given my life, doubly dear as it was by reason of its recent escape from death, to win from thee a little love, even a very little.  But as it is, a single day is life enough, provided it is spent with thee, even though I were really destined never to see another.

   [18] This was the privilege of kings’ daughters.

And she looked at him with wistful eyes; and after a while, she said:  Thou art brave, and as I would have had thee.  And thou dost not believe me:  and it may be, it is better so.  And then she turned to the King, and said:  O father, go away now:  and leave me alone with my husband.  And be not afraid, either for thy honour or my own, for there shall be as it were a sword between us.  But I wish to have him all to myself, until the end.  And when the time has come, let the gong be sounded, and I will send him out to thee, and thou canst show him the way to death.  And thereupon the old King went away as she desired, moaning and muttering, and wringing his hands with grief.

So when he was gone, those two lovers sat together all day long, gazing at each other like the sunflower and the sun.  And he utterly forgot the morrow, but it never left her mind, even for a single instant.  And she made him relate to her his whole life from the very beginning, drinking in his words, and hanging on his lips, and watching him keenly, with eyes that never left his face, holding all the while his hand, with the grasp of one who knows that her husband must be led to execution in the evening.  And she said to herself, at every moment:  Still he is here:  still he is here.  And when the sun set, she sent for food and delicacies and wine, and fed him like a child with her own hand, tasting herself nothing.  And she surfeited him with the honey of her sweetness and the syrup of her kisses and the nectar of the young new moon of beauty bathed in the sun of love, the redder[19] because of its approaching set.  And all at once, she started to her feet, in the very middle of a caress.  And she stood, listening.  And Aja listened also:  and he heard in the silence the sound of a gong.

   [19] A play on words:  meaning also more affectionate.