ercede for me, that I may look through his eyes, if but for a
moment!"

That night he slept, wearied and weakened with fasting; and whether it
were that the body guarded no longer the gates of the soul, I cannot
say; for, when the body ails, the soul soars free above its weakness.
But a strange marvel happened.

For, as it seemed to him, he awoke at the mid-noon of the night, and
he was sitting, not in his own house, but upon the roof of the royal
palace, looking down on the gliding Jumna, where the low moon slept in
silver, and the light was alone upon the water; and there were no boats,
but sleep and dream, hovering hand-in-hand, moved upon the air, and his
heart was dilated in the great silence.

Yet he knew well that he waked in some supernatural sphere: for his eyes
could see across the river as if the opposite shore lay at his feet;
and he could distinguish every leaf on every tree, and the flowers
moon-blanched and ghost-like. And there, in the blackest shade of the
pippala boughs, he beheld a faint light like a pearl; and looking with
unspeakable anxiety, he saw within the light, slowly growing, the figure
of a lady exceedingly glorious in majesty and crowned with a rayed crown
of mighty jewels of white and golden splendour. Her gold robe fell to
her feet, and--very strange to tell--her feet touched not the ground,
but hung a span's length above it, so that she floated in the air.

But the marvel of marvels was her face--not, indeed, for its beauty,
though that transcended all, but for its singular and compassionate
sweetness, wherewith she looked toward the Palace beyond the river as if
it held the heart of her heart, while death and its river lay between.

And Ustad Isa said:--"O dream, if this sweetness be but a dream, let me
never wake! Let me see forever this exquisite work of Allah the Maker,
before whom all the craftsmen are as children! For my knowledge is as
nothing, and I am ashamed in its presence."

And as he spoke, she turned those brimming eyes on him, and he saw her
slowly absorbed into the glory of the moonlight; but as she faded into
dream, he beheld, slowly rising, where her feet had hung in the blessed
air, a palace of whiteness, warm as ivory, cold as chastity, domes and
cupolas, slender minars, arches of marble fretted into sea-foam, screen
within screen of purest marble, to hide the sleeping beauty of a great
Queen--silence in the heart of it, and in every line a harmony beyond
all mu