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Begin in the dark, before the moon-face has risen, in the part of the night when even the night seems to grieve. The tradition tells us where this vision is born. In the verse before, Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda's heart had been drowning in the sweetness of Svāminī enjoying Her reversed pastimes, and then the vision dissolved, and the seer was left in a world gone suddenly hollow, a world emptied of every relish because Her form had withdrawn from sight. This is what becomes of a heart that has once tasted Her. The bliss of relishing the Supreme is so great that whoever tastes it even once stays forever immersed and can find no savor in any other subject again. Other things turn to ash on the tongue. And because his heart is unsteady and aching with that separation, into the ache a fresh scene rises, more vivid, the tradition says, than even a direct meeting in the flesh.

For this is the fruit of one firm thing. After the bad habits fall away in anartha-nivṛtti and attachment, āsakti, dawns, the Lord's own pleasure-potency begins her work of pouring out the relish, and with it comes niścayātmika buddhi, firm determination, the resolve Viśvanātha Cakravartī fixes so beautifully in his Sārārtha-Darśinī upon the Gītā, that the kīrtana and the remembrance and the service of the Lord's feet as my guru has handed them to me are my one practice, my one goal, my very life, never to be set down whether they bring me happiness or sorrow. Unadulterated devotion, the tradition teaches, is just this: love filled with the longing to please the beloved and emptied of every wish for one's own pleasure, and it finds its summit in the service of Śrī Rādhā. To the one who serves Her with that resolve the cessation of all that is unwanted comes swiftly, and the deep realizations of bhajana are sure, and he feels, O wonder, as if Rādhārāṇī Herself has taken him by the hand.

So take that hand, and walk into the kuñjas of Vraja by night. Śrīpāda, in his kiṅkarī-form, walks at Svāminī's side as Rādhā sets out toward the trysting-bower where Śyāmasundara has promised to come. But along the way another has heard the music. Candrāvalī, hidden among the vines with her companions Padmā and Śaibyā, has caught the jingling of Kṛṣṇa's anklebells, and as the sound comes near she springs from her hiding place and catches His hand and will not let it go. You walked so sweetly down this path, she says; I have ached, deprived, while You kept company with Rādhā; O Friend, I will not release You; I will keep You hidden in my heart where I may always see You. Listen, sakhīs, take Him carefully to my abode; tonight we will leave beautiful Rādhikā robbed of Her Nāgara. And her girlfriends lead Him away by the hand, and Caṇḍī Dāsa sings that Hari trembles, trembles out of fear of Rādhā even as He is taken.

So picture Her now, O Rādhe, at the bower, the lamp burning low, the night stretching long and longer, and the beloved never coming. Hour upon hour She keeps Her vigil until the joy She carried down the moonlit path curdles into dread, into the long humiliation of being made to wait. Then morning, and He comes at last, but He comes wearing the whole night written across His body. She enters the mood the rasa-knowers name khaṇḍitā, which Rūpa Gosvāmī defines in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi: when the lover comes late to the tryst marked with the signs of another's enjoyment, the beloved becomes khaṇḍitā, the wounded one, who breathes deep with anger and then falls silent.

She does not strike Him. She does something more terrible: She welcomes Him. With Gopāla Dāsa's song every word a blade wrapped in courtesy, She greets Her Nāgara. How good of You to come in the morning; what a fortunate day I shall have, having seen Your face at dawn. Then softer, crueler: but Your face has gone dry and pale; who dressed You so? It makes Me unhappy to look. All glories to You; turn around, let Me see this moon-face. Who has lined Your eyes with kohl? Whose spot of vermilion is that, the one that enchants even the great sages? Your body is scored with the scratches of sharp nails and the bites of sharp teeth, and there is the clear stamp of a bangle on Your chest. Have You spent the night as a woman, You who are a man? I see the blue sārī; this bright footlac suits Your breast so well. Now tell Me plainly, for what have You come here? And the Nāgara, the bee who plunders every flower, looks helplessly in all four directions and draws His scarf across His face, and though He labors to wash the shame away, Gopāla Dāsa says, it will not come clean.

He tries every art of pacification He possesses, and nothing reaches Her, and at last He breaks and weeps, seeing every hope undone, and She too lowers Her veiled head and begins to cry softly. Then comes the turn on which the whole night swings. A sakhī approaches: Rādhe, You may stop weeping and lift Your veil; Śyāmasundara has gone, He left in tears, I do not think He is returning; compose Yourself and go home. And at the word gone, everything reverses in Her at once. The mood the knowers call kalahāntaritā seizes Her, the one who has quarreled and now drowns in regret. The veil drops, the anger is simply not there. Sakhi, what are you saying? Gone, over one small trifle of My pique, He who loves Me so? I was such a fool. Why did you let Him go? Run, bring Him back, or I cannot keep this body alive another hour. And when the sakhī answers that He was crying at Her very feet like a great offender and still She would not soften, and that now who knows where He has wandered, the grief breaks every bank. What have I done? I have flung a jewel from my own apron, thrown away the treasure of my life. And She strikes Her own head and breast, and laments with Govinda Dāsa's song that love is blind, that she could not see at first that Kānu is a womanizer, that any girl in all the world who lets anger at Kṛṣṇa for His faults take her will burn and repent it; and now, with Her pique, Her patience and Her shame have all fled, and Her life is uncertain.

This is the secret the tradition lays bare, and it is worth holding still for: the burning of love for Kṛṣṇa is that even when you see His faults plainly you cannot stay angry, and to be angry is itself the fault for which the lover must repent. Nor will Her own girlfriends console Her; they turn the blame back, telling Her in Govinda Dāsa's song that they had warned Her, that She gave Her body to a boy with no good qualities, that She planted a love-tree in Her heart hoping the dark cloud would shower it; now, they say, She may sprinkle its roots with Her own tears. There is no comfort anywhere. There is only the searching.

And so the maidservants go out into the night-edge to find Him. After long looking they come upon Him on the bank of the Yamunā, grey with the dust of frustrated desires, utterly undone by His separation from Her. Here, O wonder, pause. His name is Madhupati, lord of sweetness, the rasika bee who lives on nectar; by His very name He should be drunk on bliss. Yet here He is unhappy, His life-airs risen almost to His throat. How can the lord of all sweetness suffer so? Because, the tradition answers, He thrives on one thing only, the loving service of mādana-mahābhāva made flesh, which is Śrī Rādhikā Herself; withhold that, and even Madhupati starves. The bee dies without the flower. The very source of all life is here the one who must beg His life back from Her.

The maidservant guards Svāminī's honor even now. She does not lead Him in triumphant; she tells Him quietly, when You enter, clasp Her feet and beg forgiveness. And so the crown-jewel of all relishers comes walking behind the messenger, and seeing the best of all beloveds from afar he bows his head low and folds his hands, and with tear-filled eyes and a heart in turmoil says, in Yadunandana Dāsa's song: I am Your servant; I have fallen at Your feet; give up this cruel pique. And Rādhikā, Sudhāmukhī, the nectar-faced one, seeing Śyāma's anguish, stares at His face and cannot look away, and reaches out and takes His tender sprout-like hands in Hers and speaks to Him in broken, trembling words. It is, the tradition sings, as if the moon, which was Her true unbroken love for Him, suddenly broke free of the clouds, which were Her pique, where all this while it had only been hidden.

And there, at last, the moon-face rises. The pique is gone. Her face shines with a bright smile, and Her red lips, those śoṇa lips, glow like an ocean filled to the brim with the very essence of fresh nectarean sweetness. The Cakora-bird, they say, lives on moonbeams; let him drink this nectar and he is brought back from the dead, and the maidservant understands what she is witnessing, that Śrīmatī alone can pour this elixir into the Śyāma-Cakora and revive His parched life. Now hear the servant's heart overflow, for here the verse itself is born, out of that watching maidservant's wonder. How, she thinks, how do the poets dare to compare this moon-face to the dull lamp the world calls moon? Nothing compares to Her face. The full nectar-rays of the night-moon could not equal one atom, one ungraspable speck, of the radiance that streams from Her countenance, that anupama-rasānanda-kanda, the incomparable root of relishable bliss and the source of all sweetness. Curses, dhik, on the full moon, whose every pride and garva is stolen by a single drop of this shining face. And see the difference between the two moons, O heart: the moon in the sky only deepens Kṛṣṇa's lovesick fever, only adds fuel to His longing, while this moon, Her face, saves Madhupati Mādhava's very life, He who was perishing of desires that no other hand could fulfill. One moon torments the lover; the other raises him from the dead. May that Rādhā, the seer cries, save our lives also.

Her rosy lips bear the sweet smile, and the smile is itself an ocean brimful of the distilled cream of new nectar, holding the very śrī, the beauty, of fresh sweetness in a single sea. And from this whole long night of grief and turning and reunion the song lifts one trembling prayer at the end, the prayer Prabodhānanda leaves unguarded: when, when will this dearmost beloved of Kṛṣṇa be pleased with me? When She is, the heart will be flooded with joy, and everything, everything, will be bliss.