as the tram steamed in. An
English gentleman, apparently just aroused from slumber, was looking out
of a first-class carriage endeavouring to read the name of the station.
As soon as he caught sight of our fellow-passenger, he cried, "Hallo,"
and took him into his own compartment. As we got into a second-class
carriage, we had no chance of finding out who the man was nor what was
the end of his story.

I said; "The man evidently took us for fools and imposed upon us out of
fun. The story is pure fabrication from start to finish." The discussion
that followed ended in a lifelong rupture between my theosophist kinsman
and myself.

THE VICTORY

She was the Princess Ajita. And the court poet of King Narayan had never
seen her. On the day he recited a new poem to the king he would raise
his voice just to that pitch which could be heard by unseen hearers in
the screened balcony high above the hall. He sent up his song towards
the star-land out of his reach, where, circled with light, the planet
who ruled his destiny shone unknown and out of ken.

He would espy some shadow moving behind the veil. A tinkling sound would
come to his car from afar, and would set him dreaming of the ankles
whose tiny golden bells sang at each step. Ah, the rosy red tender feet
that walked the dust of the earth like God's mercy on the fallen! The
poet had placed them on the altar of his heart, where he wove his songs
to the tune of those golden bells. Doubt never arose in his mind as to
whose shadow it was that moved behind the screen, and whose anklets they
were that sang to the time of his beating heart.

Manjari, the maid of the princess, passed by the poet's house on her way
to the river, and she never missed a day to have a few words with him on
the sly. When she found the road deserted, and the shadow of dusk on
the land, she would boldly enter his room, and sit at the corner of
his carpet. There was a suspicion of an added care in the choice of the
colour of her veil, in the setting of the flower in her hair.

People smiled and whispered at this, and they were not to blame. For
Shekhar the poet never took the trouble to hide the fact that these
meetings were a pure joy to him.

The meaning of her name was the spray of flowers. One must confess that
for an ordinary mortal it was sufficient in its sweetness. But Shekhar
made his own addition to this name, and called her the Spray of Spring
Flowers. And ordinary mortals shook thei