future
inconsistent with what lay before me? How could I tell what she
might think of the things which to me were now real and external--the
revelation of the only reality that underlies all the seeming. Life can
never be the same for the man who has penetrated to this, and though it
may seem a hard saying there can be but a maimed understanding between
him and those who still walk amid the phantoms of death and decay.

Her sympathy with nature was deep and wonderful but might it not be that
though the earth was eloquent to her the skies were silent? I was but
a beginner myself--I knew little indeed. Dare I risk that little in a
sweet companionship which would sink me into the contentment of the
life lived by the happily deluded between the cradle and the grave and
perhaps close to me for ever that still sphere where my highest hope
abides? I had much to ponder, for how could I lose her out of my
life--though I knew not at all whether she who had so much to make her
happiness would give me a single thought when I was gone.

If all this seem the very uttermost of selfish vanity, forgive a man who
grasped in his hand a treasure so new, so wonderful that he walked
in fear and doubt lest it should slip away and leave him in a world
darkened for ever by the torment of the knowledge that it might have
been his and he had bartered it for the mess of pottage that has bought
so many birthrights since Jacob bargained with his weary brother in
the tents of Lahai-roi. I thought I would come back later with my
prize gained and throwing it at her feet ask her wisdom in return, for
whatever I might not know I knew well she was wiser than I except in
that one shining of the light from Eleusis. I walked alone in the woods
thinking of these things and no answer satisfied me.

I did not see her alone until the day I left, for I was compelled by the
arrangements I was making to go down to Simla for a night. And now the
last morning had come with golden sun--shot mists rolling upward to
disclose the far white billows of the sea of eternity, the mountains
awaking to their enormous joys. The trees were dripping glory to the
steaming earth; it flowed like rivers into their most secret recesses,
moss and flower, fern and leaf floated upon the waves of light revealing
their inmost soul in triumphant gladness. Far off across the valleys
a cuckoo was calling--the very voice of spring, and in the green world
above my head a bird sang, a feathered