, and then I fled away
shamed and broken-hearted, and as I went she laughed, and cried:
'Remember me when you reach Devachan, O servant of the Budda-saint, for
though I change, I do not die, and even there I shall be with you who
once gave me worship!'

"And it is so, my brethren, it is so; for though I obtained absolution
for my sin and have suffered much for it through this, my next
incarnation, yet I cannot be rid of her, and for me the Utter Peace is
far, far away," and Kou-en placed his withered hands before his face and
sobbed outright.

A ridiculous sight, truly, to see a holy Khublighan well on the wrong
side of eighty, weeping like a child over a dream of a beautiful woman
which he imagined he had once dreamt in his last life more than two
thousand years ago. So the reader will say. But I, Holly, for reasons
of my own, felt deep sympathy with that poor old man, and Leo was also
sympathetic. We patted him on the back; we assured him that he was
the victim of some evil hallucination which could never be brought up
against him in this or any future existence, since, if sin there were,
it must have been forgiven long ago, and so forth. When his calm was
somewhat restored we tried also to extract further information from him,
but with poor results, so far as the priestess was concerned.

He said that he did not know to what religion she belonged, and did not
care, but thought that it must be an evil one. She went away the next
morning with the army, and he never saw or heard of her any more, though
it came into his mind that he was obliged to be locked in his cell for
eight days to prevent himself from following her. Yes, he had heard one
thing, for the abbot of that day had told the brethren. This priestess
was the real general of the army, not the king or the queen, the latter
of whom hated her. It was by her will that they pushed on northwards
across the desert to some country beyond the mountains, where she
desired to establish herself and her worship.

We asked if there really was any country beyond the mountains, and
Kou-en answered wearily that he believed so. Either in this or in a
previous life he had heard that people lived there who worshipped fire.
Certainly also it was true that about thirty years ago a brother who had
climbed the great peak yonder to spend some days in solitary meditation,
returned and reported that he had seen a marvellous thing, namely, a
shaft of fire burning in the heavens beyo