d he found himself alone. His leaving was
quite as natural as the departure from a stifling room of one who has
learned to relish fresh air.... It was during his Japan stay that
Bedient pleased himself often with the thought that somewhere in the
world was a woman meant for him--a woman with a mind and soul, as well
as flesh. If the waiting seemed long--why should he not be content,
since she was waiting, too? He would know her instantly. The slightest
errant fancy of doubt would be enough to assure him that she was _not_
the One....

Send a boy out on a long journey (even to Circe and Calypso, and past
the calling rocks of the sea), but if his mother has loved into his
life, the rare flower of fastidiousness, he will come back, with
innocence aglow beneath the weathered countenance. It is the sons of
strong women who have that fineness which makes them choice, even in
their affairs of an hour. A beautiful spirit of race guardianship is
behind this fastidiousness.... Miraculously, it seems to appear many
times in the sons of women who have failed to find their own
knight-errants. Missing happiness, they have taken disillusionment from
common man; yet so truly have they held to their dreams, that _ever_
their sons must go on searching for the true bread of life.

FIFTH CHAPTER

A FLOCK OF FLYING SWANS

One day (it was before he knew David Cairns) Bedient picked up the
_Bhagavad Gita_ from a book-stand in Shanghai. It was limp, little,
strong, and looked meaty. As he raised his eyes wonderingly from a
certain sentence, he encountered the glance of the fat old German
dealer.

"Will this little book stand reading more than once, sir?" Bedient
asked.

"Ja--but vat a little-boy question! Ven you haf read sefen times the
year for sefen years--you a man vill haf become."

Bedient had been through the Song of the Divine One many times before
he heard of it from anyone else. He had liked to think of it as a
particular treasure which he shared with the queer old German, sick
with fat. Now, it was the old Japanese sage who had turned the young
man's mind to the comparative moderns--Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau, and
several others--and it was with a shock of joy he discovered that
almost all of these light-bringers had _lived_ with his little book. So
queerly things happen.... However, the _Bhagavad Gita_ gave him a
brighter sense of the world under his feet, of a Force other than its
own balance and momentum, and of it