No message came to me, as time went by, and for the time she had
vanished completely, but I held fast to her promise and lived on
that only.
I take up my life where it ceased to be a mere suspense and
became life once more.
On the 15th of June, I found myself riding into Srinagar in
Kashmir, through the pure tremulous green of the mighty poplars
that hedge the road into the city. The beauty of the country had
half stunned me when I entered the mountain barrier of Baramula
and saw the snowy peaks that guard the Happy Valley, with the
Jhelum flowing through its tranquil loveliness. The flush of the
almond blossom was over, but the iris, like a blue sea of peace
had overflowed the world - the azure meadows smiled back at the
radiant sky. Such blossom! the blue shading into clear violet,
like a shoaling sea. The earth, like a cup held in the hand of a
god, brimmed with the draught of youth and summer and - love? But
no, for me the very word was sinister. Vanna's face, immutably
calm, confronted it.
That night I slept in a boat at Sopor, and I remember that,
waking at midnight, I looked out and saw a mountain with a
gloriole of hazy silver about it, misty and faint as a cobweb
threaded with dew.
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