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The hush of the grove deepens, and within it Śrī Rādhā waits in the moment before the meeting. Śrī Rādhā waits, and the waiting is its own ocean; separation has pressed upon Her until the heart aches, and still She waits, for love does not know how to do anything else. Then the kiṅkarī, the maidservant of the grove, comes treading softly, and she has brought Him. She has drawn Śyāma out of Candrā's kuñja and led Him here, and on the way she has made her quiet resolve: she will say nothing to Svāminī of how it was arranged, lest a single word raise Her anger and break the soft submission, the sweet dakṣiṇa mood, in which Rādhā will bend toward Him. And so the two see each other. As the old pada sings, duhuṅ doha daraśane ulasita bhelo; ākula amiyā sāgare ḍubi gelo: in that one glance they grow radiant with joy, and the lovers go down together, eager, into a sea of nectar, each immersed in the other.

O Rādhe, then begins the first of Your dexterities, the dancing of Your eyebrows. Know that Madhava does not always come simply; Rasikendra Mauli, the crest-jewel of all who relish rasa, will sometimes play the deceiver, behaving as if cold, not from any want of love but only to raise the waves higher in the ocean of Your love and to show the watching worlds how vast that love truly is. And You answer Him not with reproach but with Your brows. They lift, they curve, they dance, and from beneath them fly the flower-arrows of Cupid, sharp and unerring, straight into His heart. The youthful Kandarpa of Vṛndāvana, He who is Himself desire's own enchanter, stands utterly enchanted. The kiṅkarī watches and her breath catches: these are no eyebrows at all, she thinks, these are two black serpents, and they have bitten Śyāma upon the heart, and now His heart burns with the fever of longing. What service is this that the brows of Svāminī perform! Let the aspirant only stand near and meditate: how, O Rādhe, with the mere play of Your eyebrows You overwhelm Your lover. The maidservant glorifies that dancing, that incomparable, matchless skill, for there is nothing in the three worlds to set beside it.

And the second dexterity is more wonderful still, the playful glance from the corner of Your eye. Sidelong, half-veiled, slipping out from beneath the lashes, the kaṭākṣa goes to Śyāma, and He cannot move. He stares, He forgets to blink, "Aha, how beautiful are Your eyes," He breathes, and He searches the whole of creation for something to which He might liken them, and He finds nothing. The tradition remembers how Kṛṣṇa Dāsa Kavirāja sang of it in the Govinda-Līlāmṛta: that when the Creator set about fashioning Rādhikā's two eyes He gathered up every sweet and excellent and well-qualified thing in the world for their making, and only the leftover, the non-essential remainder, fell down to earth and became the black bees and the deer, the cakora birds and the fishes and the blue lotus. So when Śyāma seeks a likeness, the bee and the doe and the lotus are but the dropped scraps of Her glance; how shall the scrap measure the source? He is transcendental bliss personified, Nāgara Himself, and yet before these glances He stands stunned, His own ecstasy stilled. Her slightly squinted eyes, Her faint smile, agitate Him to the depths, āḍa nayāne, īṣat hāsiyā, vyākula korolo more, "Her sidelong eyes and Her slight smile agitate Me." The maidservant glorifies these hundreds upon hundreds of sweet sidelong glances, each one a fresh undoing.

Then comes the dexterity of Your speech, O fair-formed one, O Varatanu. Your words are not plain words. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, in the Rādhā-prakaraṇa, that You speak in utterances as deep and inscrutable as the perfected mantras of the Kāma-śāstra, half-revealing and half-withholding their meaning, kandarpāgama-siddha-mantra-gahanām ardhaṁ duhānā giram. And Viśvanātha Cakravartī, lingering over this very verse in his Ānanda-Candrikā, names what those grave words carry within them: the powers of the kāma-śāstra mantras themselves, vaśīkaraṇa, the energy that brings under sway; uccāṭana, that stirs and unsettles; unmādana, that maddens; mohana, that enchants; all of these are woven thick into Your speech. Why should mere words have such force upon Him who is ānanda-ghana-vigraha, the very condensed form of bliss? Because every syllable You speak is sprinkled through with the rasa of mahā-bhāva, and bliss itself cannot stand against the touch of that highest love. See how cleverly You quarrel with Him: now over the toll He demands on the curds and butter in the dāna-līlā, now over who truly owns the flowers of Vṛndāvana in the puṣpa-cayana-līlā. Rūpa Gosvāmī confesses it plainly in the same Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi: vāg-yuddhe mugdhayanti gurum api ca giram, in the war of words She bewilders even Kṛṣṇa, who is teacher to the very goddess of speech. The maidservant glorifies this verbal artistry that conquers the unconquerable.

And there is Your dexterity in coming to the tryst, O Rādhe, a thing very special. Today You have given Śyāmasundara Your hint, even while Your lips pretended refusal and Your manner feigned that You would turn Him away. You cast the arrow-glance, and with the smallest smile You tease Him: "Ohe, until this hour I took You for the king of all rasikas; but now I see You are no rasika at all, dull and unknowing, for how could You fail to read the message My eyes were giving You?" Think how many walls stand between a wife of the village and the beloved of Her heart: the watch of the household, the eyes of others, the fear within Her own mind, and then the dark and tangled forest itself. Yet anurāga, that unbroken, ever-rising passion, is mightier than every barrier. It tramples them all underfoot and carries Śrīmatī, expert and unseen, to the side of Her Prāṇaballabha, the very life of Her life. The maidservant glorifies that skill of arrival, and Śyāmasundara stands enchanted at the hundred clever ways in which His Rādhā comes to Him.

Now the rasa-ocean of the divine Pair swells past its shores, and the maidservant withdraws; quietly she steps from the bower, for there is a love that must be given its solitude. Rādhā and Śyāma sink into the nectar-sea of their loving play, and through the small gaps in the leaf-woven walls the maidservant relishes from afar the ever-fresh sweetness of pastimes always new, never twice the same; this is Your fifth dexterity, O Rādhe, the genius for love-sports that never grow old, that bloom new at every meeting, nava-nava. And when the pastimes have run their course the maidservant comes again into the bower, for she knows her hour of service has arrived, and she too shows her own dexterities, the artful expertise of loving service; let the aspirant glorify that skill of Śrīpāda the kiṅkarī as well, the deftness of the heart that knows how to serve. Then enter Lalitā and Viśākhā and the other dear sakhīs, drawing their veils across their faces, their shoulders shaking with stifled laughter at the naughty play of Rādhikā and Mādhava. And so the sixth dexterity is the festival itself, the rasa of laughter and teasing that Rādhā shares with Her girlfriends. O Rādhe, glory to all six and to the festival of mirth; each surpasses the last, each is supreme, and in every one of them You conquer, and in conquering Your Beloved You give Your servants something endlessly sweet to remember.