w others he had
known, and the women such adepts at mothering! Then the shy, slender
girls, impassable ranges between him and any romantic sense; yet, he
was glad to be near them, glad to hear their voices and their laughter
in the evenings.... He loved the long shadow of the mountains, the
still dusty roads where the cattle moved so softly that the dust never
rose above their knees; the smell of wood-smoke in the dusk, the
legends of the gods, scents of the high forest, the thoughts which
nourished his days and nights, and the brilliant stars, so steady and
eternal, and so different from the steaming constellations of
Luzon;--he loved it all, and saw these things, as one home from bitter
exile.

And then with the cool dark and the mountain winds, after the long,
pitiless day of fierce, devouring sunlight, the moon glided over the
fainting world with peace and healing--like an angel over a
battle-field.... The two are mystic in every Indian ideal of beauty,
and alike cosmic--woman and the moon.

There was a certain trail that rose from Preshbend, and ended after an
hour's walk in a high cliff of easy ascent. Bedient often went there
alone when the moon was full--and waited for her rising. At last
through a rift in the far mountains, a faint ghost would appear, and
waveringly whiten the glacial breast of old _God-Mother_--the highest
peak in the vision of Preshbend. Just a nucleus of light at first, like
a shimmering mist, but it steadied and brightened--until that snowy
summit was configured in the midst of her lowlier brethren on the
borders of Kashmir--and Bedient, turning from his deep reflections,
would find the source of the miracle, trailing her glory up from the
South.

Often he lost the sense of personality in these meditations. His eyes
turned at first upon that dead, dark mountain, which presently caught
the reflection of the moon (in itself a miracle of loveliness); then
the moon which held the reflection of the hidden sun, which in its turn
reflected the power of All; and he, a bit of suppressed animation among
the rocks of the cliff, audaciously comprehending that chain of
reflections and adding his own! The marvel of it all carried him a
dimension beyond the responsiveness of mere brain-tissue, and for hours
in which he was not Bedient, but _one_ with some Unity that swept over
the pageant of the universe, his body lay hunched and chill in the cold
of the heights.... That was his first departure, and h