Does Nature
know her wonders when she shines in her strength? Does a woman know the
infinite meanings her beauty may have for the beholder? I cannot tell.
Nor can I tell if I saw this girl as she may have seemed to those who
read only the letter of the book and are blind to its spirit, or in the
deepest sense as she really was in the sight of That which created her
and of which she was a part. Surely it is a proof of the divinity of
love that in and for a moment it lifts the veil of so-called reality and
shows each to the other mysteriously perfect and inspiring as the world
will never see them, but as they exist in the Eternal, and in the sight
of those who have learnt that the material is but the dream, and the
vision of love the truth.

I will say then, for the alphabet of what I knew but cannot tell, that
she had the low broad brows of a Greek Nature Goddess, the hair swept
back wing-like from the temples and massed with a noble luxuriance. It
lay like rippled bronze, suggesting something strong and serene in its
essence. Her eyes were clear and gray as water, the mouth sweetly curved
above a resolute chin. It was a face which recalled a modelling in
marble rather than the charming pastel and aquarelle of a young woman's
colouring, and somehow I thought of it less as the beauty of a woman
than as some sexless emanation of natural things, and this impression
was strengthened by her height and the long limbs, slender and strong as
those of some youth trained in the pentathlon, subject to the severest
discipline until all that was superfluous was fined away and the perfect
form expressing the true being emerged. The body was thus more beautiful
than the face, and I may note in passing that this is often the case,
because the face is more directly the index of the restless and unhappy
soul within and can attain true beauty only when the soul is in harmony
with its source.

She was a little like her pale and wearied mother. She might resemble
her still more when the sorrow of this world that worketh death should
have had its will of her. I had yet to learn that this would never
be--that she had found the open door of escape.

We three spent much time together in the days that followed. I never
tired of their company and I think they did not tire of mine, for
my wanderings through the world and my studies in the ancient Indian
literatures and faiths with the Pandit Devaswami were of interest to
them both though in enti