the truth,
because she had been his great stay and help when everyone was against
him, because if there had been no Yathodaya there had been perchance no
Buddha. And by the women--I need not say why she is honoured by all
women. If ever there was a story that appealed to woman's heart, surely
it is this: her love, her abandonment, her courage, her submission when
they met again in after-years, her protest against being sacrificed upon
the altar of her husband's religion. Truly, it is all of the very
essence of humanity. Whenever the story of the Buddha comes to be
written, then will be written also the story of the life of Yathodaya
his wife. If one is full of wisdom and teaching, the other is full of
suffering and teaching also. I cannot write it here. I have so much to
say on other matters that there is no room. But some day it will be
written, I trust, this old message to a new world.

CHAPTER III

HE WHO FOUND THE LIGHT--II

'He who never spake but good and wise words, he who was the light
of the world, has found too soon the Peace.'--_Lament on the death
of the Buddha._

The prince rode forth into the night, and as he went, even in the first
flush of his resolve, temptation came to him. As the night closed behind
he remembered all he was leaving: he remembered his father and his
mother; his heart was full of his wife and child.

'Return!' said the devil to him. 'What seek you here? Return, and be a
good son, a good husband, a good father. Remember all that you are
leaving to pursue vain thoughts. You, a great man--you might be a great
king, as your father wishes--a mighty conqueror of nations. The night is
very dark, and the world before you is very empty.'

The prince's heart was full of bitterness at the thought of those he
loved, of all that he was losing. Yet he never wavered. He would not
even turn to look his last on the great white city lying in a silver
dream behind him. He set his face upon his way, trampling beneath him
every worldly consideration, despising a power that was but vanity and
illusion; he went on into the dark.

Presently he came to a river, the boundary of his father's kingdom, and
here he stopped. Then the prince turned to Maung San, and told him that
he must return. Beyond the river lay for the prince the life of a holy
man, who needed neither servant nor horse, and Maung San must return.
All his prayers were in vain; his supplications that he might be allow