here came a silence as
of cemeteries; the living ocean seemed to have ebbed away from about
him, to have been engulfed within abysses of subterranean architecture!
He found himself alone in some strange crypt before a basin,
shell-shaped and shallow, bearing in its centre a rounded column of less
than human height, whose smooth and spherical summit was wreathed with
flowers. Lamps similarly formed, and fed with oil of palm, hung above
it. There was no other graven image, no visible divinity. Flowers of
countless varieties lay heaped upon the pavement; they covered its
surface like a carpet, thick, soft; they exhaled their ghosts beneath
his feet. The perfume seemed to penetrate his brain,--a perfume
sensuous, intoxicating, unholy; an unconquerable languor mastered his
will, and he sank to rest upon the floral offerings.

The sound of a tread, light as a whisper, approached through the heavy
stillness, with a drowsy tinkling of _pagals_, a tintinnabulation of
anklets. All suddenly he felt glide about his neck the tepid
smoothness of a woman's arm. _She, she!_ his Illusion, his
Temptation; but how transformed, transfigured!--preternatural in her
loveliness, incomprehensible in her charm! Delicate as a jasmine-petal
the cheek that touched his own; deep as night, sweet as summer, the
eyes that watched him. "_Heart's-thief,_" her flower-lips
whispered,--"_heart's-thief, how have I sought for thee! How have I
found thee! Sweets I bring thee, my beloved; lips and bosom; fruit and
blossom. Hast thirst? Drink from the well of mine eyes! Wouldst
sacrifice? I am thine altar! Wouldst pray? I am thy God!_"

Their lips touched; her kiss seemed to change the cells of his blood to
flame. For a moment Illusion triumphed; Mara prevailed!... With a shock
of resolve the dreamer awoke in the night,--under the stars of the
Chinese sky.

Only a mockery of sleep! But the vow had been violated, the sacred
purpose unfulfilled! Humiliated, penitent, but resolved, the ascetic
drew from his girdle a keen knife, and with unfaltering hands severed
his eyelids from his eyes, and flung them from him. "O Thou Perfectly
Awakened!" he prayed, "thy disciple hath not been overcome save through
the feebleness of the body; and his vow hath been renewed. Here shall he
linger, without food or drink, until the moment of its fulfilment." And
having assumed the hieratic posture,--seated himself with his lower
limbs folded beneath him, and the palms of his han