and keep us
from evil and bondage to badness,
Pour out the light and the joy of Thy life
on our darkness and sadness.

Shine on our gardens and fields,
shine on our working and waving;
Shine on the whole race of man,
believing and unbelieving;
Shine on us now through the night,
Shine on us now in Thy might,
The flame of our holy love
and the song of our worship receiving.

The fire rose with the chant, throbbing as if the flame responded to the
music, until it cast a bright illumination through the whole apartment,
revealing its simplicity and splendour.

The floor was laid with tiles of dark blue veined with white; pilasters
of twisted silver stood out against the blue walls; the clear-story of
round-arched windows above them was hung with azure silk; the vaulted
ceiling was a pavement of blue stones, like the body of heaven in its
clearness, sown with silver stars. From the four corners of the roof
hung four golden magic-wheels, called the tongues of the gods. At
the eastern end, behind the altar, there were two dark-red pillars of
porphyry; above them a lintel of the same stone, on which was carved the
figure of a winged archer, with his arrow set to the string and his bow
drawn.

The doorway between the pillars, which opened upon the terrace of
the roof, was covered with a heavy curtain of the colour of a ripe
pomegranate, embroidered with innumerable golden rays shooting upward
from the floor. In effect the room was like a quiet, starry night, all
azure and silver, flushed in the cast with rosy promise of the dawn. It
was, as the house of a man should be, an expression of the character and
spirit of the master.

He turned to his friends when the song was ended, and invited them to be
seated on the divan at the western end of the room.

"You have come to-night," said he, looking around the circle, "at my
call, as the faithful scholars of Zoroaster, to renew your worship and
rekindle your faith in the God of Purity, even as this fire has been
rekindled on the altar. We worship not the fire, but Him of whom it is
the chosen symbol, because it is the purest of all created things. It
speaks to us of one who is Light and Truth. Is it not so, my father?"

"It is well said, my son," answered the venerable Abgarus. "The
enlightened are never idolaters. They lift the veil of form and go in
to the shrine of reality, and new light and truth are comi