joy, so clear, so passionate that
I thought the great summer morning listened in silence to his rapture
ringing through the woods. I waited until the Jubilate was ended and
then went in to bid good-bye to my friends.

Mrs. Ingmar bid me the kindest farewell and I left her serene in the
negation of all beauty, all hope save that of a world run on the lines
of a model municipality, disease a memory, sewerage, light and air
systems perfected, the charted brain sending its costless messages to
the outer parts of the habitable globe, and at least a hundred years
of life with a decent cremation at the end of it assured to every
eugenically born citizen. No more. But I have long ceased to regret
that others use their own eyes whether clear or dim. Better the merest
glimmer of light perceived thus than the hearsay of the revelations of
others. And by the broken fragments of a bewildered hope a man shall
eventually reach the goal and rejoice in that dawn where the morning
stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy. It must come, for
it is already here.

Brynhild walked with me through the long glades in the fresh thin air
to the bridle road where my men and ponies waited, eager to be off. We
stood at last in the fringe of trees on a small height which commanded
the way;--a high uplifted path cut along the shoulders of the hills and
on the left the sheer drop of the valleys. Perhaps seven or eight feet
in width and dignified by the name of the Great Hindustan and Tibet Road
it ran winding far away into Wonderland. Looking down into the valleys,
so far beneath that the solitudes seem to wall them in I thought of all
the strange caravans which have taken this way with tinkle of bells
and laughter now so long silenced, and as I looked I saw a lost little
monastery in a giant crevice, solitary as a planet on the outermost ring
of the system, and remembrance flashed into my mind and I said;

"I have marching orders that have countermanded my own plans. I am to
journey to the Buddhist Monastery of Tashigong, and there meet a friend
who will tell me what is necessary that I may travel to Yarkhand and
beyond. It will be long before I see Kashmir."

In those crystal clear eyes I saw a something new to me--a faint smile,
half pitying, half sad;

"Who told you, and where?"

"A girl in a strange place. A woman who has twice guided me--"

I broke off. Her smile perplexed me. I could not tell what to say. She
repeated in a