of these glorious sunsets. For while
the mighty monsoon clouds used to roll up on to the line of
Himalayan peaks and pile themselves up there, billow upon billow,
in magnificent array, dark and fearful in the general mass, but
clear-edged and silver-tipped along the summits, yet beyond that line, in
Tibet, the sky was nearly always clear and blue of the bluest. With
nothing whatever to impede my view--no trees, nor houses, nor
fences, nor obstacles of any kind--I could look out far over these
open plains to distant hills; beyond them, again, to Mount Everest a
hundred miles away; beyond it, again, to still more distant
mountains; and, finally, behind them into the setting sun. And these
far hills and snowy mountains, seen as they were across an
absolutely open plain, seemed not to impede the view but only to
heighten the impression of great distance. The eye would be led on
from feature to feature, each receding farther into the distance till it
seemed only a step from the farthest snowy mountain into the
glowing sun itself.

Every evening, whenever I could, I used to walk out alone into the
open plain to feast my soul on the splendid scene. In the stern
glacier region round K2 had had to brace myself up and to summon
up all that was toughest within me in order to cope with the terribly
exacting conditions in which I found myself. In the presence of
these calm but fervent sunsets there was a different feeling. I had a
sense of expansion, a longing to let myself go. And I would feel
myself craving to let myself go out all I could into these glowing
depths of light and colour, and trying to open myself out to their
beauty, that as much as possible of it should flow into me and
glorify my whole being. I had the feeling that in those sunsets there
was _any_ length for my soul to go out to--that there was _infinite_
room there for the soul's expansion. There was inexhaustible glory
for the soul to absorb, and the soul was thirsting for it and could
never have enough.

Evening after evening came to me, too--quite unconsciously, and as
it were inevitably--Shelley's words (slightly altered):

"Be thou, spirit bright,
My spirit! Be thou me, most glorious one!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy."

It was not that there was any particular message that I had to give.
But there was aroused in me just this simple, insistent longing to let
others know what glory there was i