he running of the green life-blood in
their veins, the delicate trembling of their finger-tips.

My companion and I were not heeded. We stood hand in hand like children
who have innocently strayed into a palace, gazing in wonderment. The
august life went its way upon its own occasions, and, if we would, we
might watch. Then the voice, clear and cold, proceeding, as it were,
with some story begun before we had strayed into the Presence, the whole
assembly listening in silence.

"--and as it has been so it will be, for the Law will have the blind
soul carried into a body which is a record of the sins it has committed,
and will not suffer that soul to escape from rebirth into bodies until
it has seen the truth--"

And even as this was said and I listened, knowing myself on the verge of
some great knowledge, I felt sleep beginning to weigh upon my eyelids.
The sound blurred, flowed unsyllabled as a stream, the girl's hand grew
light in mine; she was fading, becoming unreal; I saw her eyes like
faint stars in a mist. They were gone. Arms seemed to receive me--to lay
me to sleep and I sank below consciousness, and the night took me.

When I awoke the radiant arrows of the morning were shooting into the
long hall where I lay, but as I rose and looked about me, strange--most
strange, ruin encircled me everywhere. The blue sky was the roof. What I
had thought a palace lost in the jungle, fit to receive its King should
he enter, was now a broken hall of State; the shattered pillars were
festooned with waving weeds, the many coloured lantana grew between the
fallen blocks of marble. Even the sculptures on the walls were difficult
to decipher. Faintly I could trace a hand, a foot, the orb of a
woman's bosom, the gracious outline of some young God, standing above a
crouching worshipper. No more. Yes, and now I saw above me as the dawn
touched it the form of the Dweller in the Windhya Hills, Parvati the
Beautiful, leaning softly over something breathing music at her feet.
Yet I knew I could trace the almost obliterated sculpture only because
I had already seen it defined in perfect beauty. A deep crack ran across
the marble; it was weathered and stained by many rains, and little ferns
grew in the crevices, but I could reconstruct every line from my own
knowledge. And how? The Parvati of Ranipur differed in many important
details. She stood, bending forward, wheras this sweet Lady sat. Her
attendants were small satyr-like spirits o