said the words the breath caught in his
throat--"how the ray of light was sent to us in farewell, and to show us
a path of escape from the Place of Death? Now I think that it has been
sent again in greeting to point out the path to the Place of Life where
Ayesha dwells, whom we have lost awhile."

"It may be so," I answered shortly, for the matter was beyond speech
or argument, beyond wonder even. But I knew then, as I know now that
we were players in some mighty, predestined drama; that our parts were
written and we must speak them, as our path was prepared and we must
tread it to the end unknown. Fear and doubt were left behind, hope was
sunk in certainty; the fore-shadowing visions of the night had found an
actual fulfilment and the pitiful seed of the promise of her who died,
growing unseen through all the cruel, empty years, had come to harvest.

No, we feared no more, not even when with the dawn rose the roaring
wind, through which we struggled down the mountain slopes, as it would
seem in peril of our lives at every step; not even as hour by hour we
fought our way onwards through the whirling snow-storm, that made us
deaf and blind. For we knew that those lives were charmed. We could not
see or hear, yet we were led. Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward
and homewards, till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its
instinct brought us unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old
abbot embraced us in his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks.
For they were sure that we must be dead. Through such a storm, they
said, no man had ever lived before.

It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of
waiting. In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay
the door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock. For between
us and these stretched the great desert, where the snow rolled like
billows, and until that snow melted we dared not attempt its passage. So
we sat in the monastery, and schooled our hearts to patience.

Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last.
One evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few
degrees of frost. The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning
not snow was falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks
preparing their instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season
of sowing was at hand. For three days it rained, while the snows melted
before our eyes. On