all the thousand ecstasies of leaf and flower. An islet
bore a little pagoda that stood in the eternal noon a pillared jewel
of stone, silent and beautiful. It was half concealed with festoons of
creeping plants whose flowers were great globes of crimson, yellow and
blue.

There was around me--paradise, and beside me--ecstasy!

"You are pleased with my garden?" said the goddess.

"This must be the garden of Hesperides that our poets write of," I
replied. "Here at last I have found the ideal life."

The goddess reclined on the couch in an attitude of luxurious grace.
Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful.

[Illustration: The Jardil, or Love-Pouch.]

"Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "do
they ever sing the delights of hopeless love?"

As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strange
delight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, the
idol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinity
of power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to become
the companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, her
discoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune.

As these thoughts swiftly ran through my brain, and before I had time
to reply, music, soft, weird, intensely intoxicating, was blown from
among the tempestuous bloom of the paradises. The melody seemed the
holiest thrill of hearts communing in the rapture of love! To explain
the sweetness of the moment is impossible--the goddess was so alluring
and serene. She kept her own emotions in the background as the result
of a proud devotion to duty, and yet I felt swathed with a soul that
seemed to have found an opportunity worthy the expression of its life.

A situation so daring, yet so tender, required an equally daring and
reverent soul to meet it. I felt all its surpassing loveliness.

"Our poets," I replied, "have written of love in all its phases,
describing the most spiritual passions as well as the most lustful. In
poetry love may be any phase of love, but the reality is a compound of
lust and spirituality, being rooted both in body and soul."

"Do your people," said the goddess, "never differentiate lust and love
and obtain in real life only a spiritual romantic love such as we do
in Atvatabar?"

"We believe, your holiness," I replied, "that such a love as you refer
to is only to be found in a spiritual state and is the secret of
disembod