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The day's heat has gone soft, and inside the bower a single maidservant kneels at the hem of Śrī Rādhā's garment. She has been serving so faithfully that Svāminī turns to her with a smile that is half tenderness and half teasing, and asks, "What payment do you ask of Me for all this serving?" Hear the answer, for the whole verse is that answer, sung from the lowest and gladdest place there is, the place of Rādhā's own slave-girl. "Payment, O Rādhe? I want no reward at all. The joy that rises by itself from serving You is already more than enough. This service is a festival of bliss that runs past the sweetness of every sense-pleasure and past even the still ocean of merging into the formless Brahman. The happiness of Your personal service dances on the heads of all other felicities; let it crown me, and I am rich."

Then watch how each loving name She is called becomes a reply to a doubt She raises, for She is never satiated with Her own love and keeps finding reasons it cannot be. First She protests, "Vṛndāvana-candra is so hard to reach, and the loving play in the kuñja harder still; how can your longing for grove-service ever be fulfilled?" And the maidservant answers by naming Her: śrī-vṛndāvana-candra-citta-hariṇī-bandha sphurad-bāgure, O manifest snare that binds the deer-like heart of the moon of Vṛndāvana. Consider the picture. An ordinary hunter spreads his net where it cannot be seen, and the innocent deer blunders into it without ever knowing. But Your snare, O Rādhe, is not hidden at all. Your beauty and sweetness are like the enchanting song a hunter sings to lure the deer, and the deer-heart of Kṛṣṇa, hearing it, walks into the net with open eyes, knowingly, willingly, glad to be caught. So how could He be hard for You? He has already run to Your trap of His own accord.

Then She protests again, lowering Her own glory: "It is only pure love that catches His heart of its own will, and I have no such love; how then could He ever be bound by Me?" And the maidservant answers with another of Her names: You are sāndra-prema-rasaugha-vārṣiṇī, the very rain-cloud that showers forth floods of deep, condensed love-rasa. Your love is the most powerful there is, charged with the prowess of the finest play, the keli that crowns the empire of newly-opening great sweetness; for You are the empress of keli-mādhurī, the sovereign of amorous sweetness. Kṛṣṇa is śṛṅgāra-rasa itself, amorous flavour walking in a body, and yet You can satisfy desires in Him that He could not have dreamed for Himself. You who have no love? O Rādhe, You are love so thick it falls as rain.

And out of that same fullness She is also kāruṇya-kallolinī, a river of compassion forever rolling in waves, indeed compassion itself given a form. So when She raises Her last and sharpest doubt, the doubt that wounds the servant most, the river answers it. "And you," She asks, "what is your qualification for My most confidential service in the secret groves? Why do you even reach for a thing so priceless?" Here the maidservant does not pretend. "I have no qualification whatsoever, O Rādhe. Nothing in me earns this. But You are a river of compassion, and the instant I remember Your mercy I forget how unworthy I am; the light of hope rises and floods the darkness of my despairing heart. So forget my fitness; let Your compassion, not my merit, be the door. Bless this empty-handed one with Your confidential service."

And then, naming Her once more, the servant comes to the surrender that ends the song: śrī-rādhe nava-kuñja-nāgari, O Śrī Rādhā, clever young heroine of the new groves, most expert in playing the ever-fresh pastimes of the arbours, You in whose worship of Kṛṣṇa You will surely need a helping hand. Tava kṛto 'smi dāsyotsavaiḥ: in this fresh grove-city I have been bought outright, purchased and sold into the festivals of Your service. The Rādhāvallabha singers gather this whole cry under one word, ananyatā, single-hearted exclusive belonging: "I have been sold into Your dāsya-utsava; I am wholly and only Yours."