pon my sayings, for I am sure that the wine you crush
from the vintage of your desire will run red like blood, and that in its
drinking you shall find neither forgetfulness nor peace. Made blind by
a passion of which well I know the sting and power, you seek to add a
fair-faced evil to your lives, thinking that from this unity there shall
be born all knowledge and great joy.

"Rather should you desire to live alone in holiness until at length your
separate lives are merged and lost in the Good Unspeakable, the eternal
bliss that lies in the last Nothingness. Ah! you do not believe me now;
you shake your heads and smile; yet a day will dawn, it may be after
many incarnations, when you shall bow them in the dust and weep, saying
to me, 'Brother Kou-en, yours were the words of wisdom, ours the deeds
of foolishness;'" and with a deep sigh the old man turned and left us.

"A cheerful faith, truly," said Leo, looking after him, "to dwell
through aeons in monotonous misery in order that consciousness may be
swallowed up at last in some void and formless abstraction called the
'Utter Peace.' I would rather take my share of a bad world and keep my
hope of a better. Also I do not think that he knows anything of Ayesha
and her destiny."

"So would I," I answered, "though perhaps he is right after all. Who can
tell? Moreover, what is the use of reasoning? Leo, we have no choice;
we follow our fate. To what that fate may lead us we shall learn in due
season."

Then we went to rest, for it was late, though I found little sleep that
night. The warnings of the ancient abbot, good and learned man as he
was, full also of ripe experience and of the foresighted wisdom that
is given to such as he, oppressed me deeply. He promised us sorrow and
bloodshed beyond the mountains, ending in death and rebirths full of
misery. Well, it might be so, but no approaching sufferings could stay
our feet. And even if they could, they should not, since to see her face
again I was ready to brave them all. And if this was my case what must
be that of Leo!

A strange theory that of Kou-en's, that Ayesha was the goddess in
old Egypt to whom Kallikrates was priest, or at the least her
representative. That the royal Amenartas, with whom he fled, seduced him
from the goddess to whom he was sworn. That this goddess incarnate
in Ayesha--or using the woman Ayesha and her passions as her
instruments--was avenged upon them both at Kor, and that there in an
after