packing was finished, and, as far as my possessions went, the
little cabin had the soulless emptiness that comes with departure. I was
enduring as best I could. If she had held loyally to her pact, could
I do less. Was she to blame for my wild hope that in the end she would
relent and step down to the household levels of love?

She sat by the window--the last time I should see the moonlit banks and
her clear face against them. I made and won my fight for the courage of
words.

"And now I've finished everything--thank goodness! and we can talk.
Vanna--you will write to me?"

"Once. I promise that."

"Only once? Why? I counted on your words."

"I want to speak to you of something else now. I want to tell you a
memory. But look first at the pale light behind the Takht-i-Suliman."

So I had seen it with her. So I should not see it again. We watched
until a line of silver sparkled on the black water, and then she spoke
again.

"Stephen, do you remember in the ruined monastery near Peshawar, how I
told you of the young Abbot, who came down to Peshawar with a Chinese
pilgrim? And he never returned."

"I remember. There was a Dancer."

"There was a Dancer. She was Lilavanti, and she was brought there to
trap him but when she saw him she loved him, and that was his ruin and
hers. Trickery he would have known and escaped. Love caught him in an
unbreakable net, and they fled down the Punjab and no one knew any more.
But I know. For two years they lived together and she saw the agony in
his heart--the anguish of his broken vows, the face of the Blessed One
receding into an infinite distance. She knew that every day added a link
to the heavy Karma that was bound about the feet she loved, and her soul
said "Set him free," and her heart refused the torture. But her soul was
the stronger. She set him free."

"How?"

"She took poison. He became an ascetic in the hills and died in peace
but with a long expiation upon him."

"And she?"

"I am she."

"You!" I heard my voice as if it were another man's. Was it possible
that I--a man of the twentieth century, believed this impossible thing?
Impossible, and yet--what had I learnt if not the unity of Time, the
illusion of matter? What is the twentieth century, what the first?
Do they not lie before the Supreme as one, and clean from our petty
divisions? And I myself had seen what, if I could trust it, asserted the
marvels that are no marvels to those who know.

"You loved