'(459) Thenceforth pleasant talk found no entrance into him. His friends' words seemed harsh to him; the conversation of his kinsmen gave him no delight. (460) His body was dried up by love's fire, but he did not yield up the tenderness of his heart. (461) He despised happiness, but not self-control.
'While he was thus drawn forward by strong love, which had its life resting on the goodness and beauty of Kadambari, and held backwards by his very deep affection for his parents, he beheld one day, when wandering on the banks of the Sipra, a troop of horse approaching. (462) He sent a man to inquire what this might be, and himself crossing the Sipra where the water rose but to his thigh, he awaited his messenger's return in a shrine of Kartikeya. Drawing Patralekha to him, he said, "Look! that horse-man whose face can scarce be descried is Keyuraka!"
'(463) He then beheld Keyuraka throw himself from his horse while yet far off, gray with dust from swift riding, while by his changed appearance, his lack of adornment, his despondent face, and his eyes that heralded his inward grief, he announced, even without words, the evil plight of Kadambari. Candrapida lovingly called him as he hastily bowed and drew near, and embraced him. And when he had drawn back and paid his homage, the prince, having gratified his followers by courteous inquiries, looked at him eagerly, and said, "By the sight of thee, Keyuraka, the well-being of the lady Kadambari and her attendants is proclaimed. When thou art rested and at ease, thou shalt tell me the cause of thy coming;" and he took Keyuraka and Patralekha home with him on his elephant. (464) Then he dismissed his followers, and only accompanied by Patralekha, he called Keyuraka to him, and said: "Tell me the message of Kadambari, Madalekha and Mahaçveta."
'"What shall I say?" replied Keyuraka; "I have no message from any of these. For when I had entrusted Patralekha to Meghanada, and returned, and had told of thy going to Ujjayini, Mahaçveta looked upwards, sighed a long, hot sigh, and saying sadly, 'It is so then,' returned to her own hermitage to her penance. Kadambari, as though bereft of consciousness, ignorant of Mahaçveta's departure, only opened her eyes after a long time, scornfully bidding me tell Mahaçveta; and asking Madalekha (465) if anyone ever had done, or would do, such a deed as Candrapida, she dismissed her attendants, threw herself on her couch, veiled her head, and spent the day without speaking even to Madalekha, who wholly shared her grief. When early next morning I went to her, she gazed at me long with tearful eyes, as if blaming me. And I, when thus looked at by my sorrowing mistress, deemed myself ordered to go, and so, without telling the princess, I have approached my lord's feet. Therefore vouchsafe to hear attentively the bidding of Keyuraka, whose heart is anxious to save the life of one whose sole refuge is in thee. For, as by thy first coming that virgin [343] forest was stirred as by the fragrant Malaya wind, so when she beheld thee, the joy of the whole world, like the spring, love entered her as though she were a red açoka creeper. (466) But now she endures great torture for thy sake." (466-470) Then Keyuraka told at length all her sufferings, till the prince, overcome by grief, could bear it no longer and swooned.