w and very; softly:

"The surface of the mirror is clouded with a breath."

Out of a long silence one of the neophytes replies, "The mirror can be
wiped clear."

Again the world becomes incense and doves,--in the silence and peace
of that monastery, it may have been a few minutes or a decade,--and
the second Tibetan whispers, "There is no need to wipe the mirror."

When I have left behind the world of inharmonious colors, of polluted
waters, of soot-stained walls and smoke-tinged air, the green of
jungle comes like a cooling bath of delicate tints and shades. I think
of all the green things I have loved--of malachite in matrix and
table-top; of jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mellowed
signets, fashioned by lovers of their craft, and seasoned by the
toying yellow fingers of generations of forgotten Chinese
emperors--jade, as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the right
color. I think too, of dainty emerald scarves that are seen and lost
in a flash at a dance; of the air-cooled, living green of curling
breakers; of a lonely light that gleams to starboard of an unknown
passing vessel, and of the transparent green of northern lights that
flicker and play on winter nights high over the garish glare of
Broadway.

Now, in late afternoon, when I opened my eyes in the little gorge, the
soft green vibrations merged insensibly with the longer waves of the
doves' voices and with the dying odor. Soon the green alone was
dominant; and when I had finished thinking of pleasant, far-off green
things, the wonderful emerald of my great tree-frog of last year came
to mind,--Gawain the mysterious,--and I wondered if I should ever
solve his life.

In front of me was a little jungle rainpool. At the base of the
miniature precipice of the gorge, this pool was a thing of clay. It
was milky in consistence, from the roiling of suspended clay; and
when the surface caught a glint of light and reflected it, only the
clay and mud walls about came to the eye. It was a very regular pool,
a man's height in diameter, and, for all I knew, from two inches to
two miles deep. I became absorbed in a sort of subaquatic mirage, in
which I seemed to distinguish reflections beneath the surface. My eyes
refocused with a jerk, and I realized that something had unconsciously
been perceived by my rods and cones, and short-circuited to my duller
brain. Where a moment before was an unbroken translucent surface, were
now thirteen strange beings who