icable
sight--one that in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder aside
for I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible may
well be the actual. His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If I
compare it to the passionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for the
Riddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a noble
acquiescence and a content that had it vibrated must have passed into
joy.

Words or their equivalent passed between us. I felt his voice.

"You have heard the music of the Flute?"

"I have heard."

"What has it given?"

"A consuming longing."

"It is the music of the Eternal. The creeds and the faiths are the words
that men have set to that melody. Listening, it will lead you to Wisdom.
Day by day you will interpret more surely."

"I cannot stand alone."

"You will not need. What has led you will lead you still. Through many
births it has led you. How should it fail?"

"What should I do?"

"Go forward."

"What should I shun?"

"Sorrow and fear."

"What should I seek?"

"Joy."

"And the end?"

"Joy. Wisdom. They are the Light and Dark of the Divine." A cold breeze
passed and touched my forehead. I was still standing in the middle of
the bridge above the water gliding to the Ocean, and there was no figure
by the Bull of Shiva. I was alone. I passed back to the tents with the
shudder that is not fear but akin to death upon me. I knew I had been
profoundly withdrawn from what we call actual life, and the return is
dread.

The days passed as we floated down the river to Srinagar. On board the
Kedarnath, now lying in our first berth beneath the chenars near and yet
far from the city, the last night had come. Next morning I should begin
the long ride to Baramula and beyond that barrier of the Happy Valley
down to Murree and the Punjab. Where afterwards? I neither knew nor
cared. My lesson was before me to be learned. I must try to detach
myself from all I had prized--to say to my heart it was but a loan
and no gift, and to cling only to the imperishable. And did I as yet
certainly know more than the A B C of the hard doctrine by which I
must live? "Que vivre est difficile, O mon cocur fatigue!"--an immense
weariness possessed me--a passive grief.

Vanna would follow later with the wife of an Indian doctor. I believed
she was bound for Lahore but on that point she had not spoken certainly
and I felt we should not meet again.

And now my