that which in some earlier life of
hers once brought me to sin.

"Only be not mistaken, she is no immortal; nothing is immortal. She is
but a being held back by her own pride, her own greatness if you will,
upon the path towards Nirvana. That pride will be humbled, as already it
has been humbled; that brow of majesty shall be sprinkled with the dust
of change and death, that sinful spirit must be purified by sorrows and
by separations. Brother Leo, if you win her, it will be but to lose, and
then the ladder must be reclimbed. Brother Holly, for you as for me loss
is our only gain, since thereby we are spared much woe. Oh! bide here
and pray with me. Why dash yourselves against a rock? Why labour to pour
water into a broken jar whence it must sink into the sands of profitless
experience, and there be wasted, whilst you remain athirst?"

"Water makes the sand fertile," I answered. "Where water falls, life
comes, and sorrow is the seed of joy."

"Love is the law of life," broke in Leo; "without love there is no
life. I seek love that I may live. I believe that all these things are
ordained to an end which we do not know. Fate draws me on--I fulfil my
fate----"

"And do but delay your freedom. Yet I will not argue with you, brother,
who must follow your own road. See now, what has this woman, this
priestess of a false faith if she be so still, brought you in the past?
Once in another life, or so I understand your story, you were sworn to
a certain nature-goddess, who was named Isis, were you not, and to her
alone? Then a woman tempted you, and you fled with her afar. And there
what found you? The betrayed and avenging goddess who slew you, or if
not the goddess, one who had drunk of her wisdom and was the minister
of her vengeance. Having that wisdom this minister--woman or evil
spirit--refused to die because she had learned to love you, but waited
knowing that in your next life she would find you again, as indeed she
would have done more swiftly in Devachan had she died without living on
alone in so much misery. And she found you, and she died, or seemed to
die, and now she is re-born, as she must be, and doubtless you will
meet once more, and again there must come misery. Oh! my friends, go not
across the mountains; bide here with me and lament your sins."

"Nay," answered Leo, "we are sworn to a tryst, and we do not break our
word."

"Then, brethren, go keep your tryst, and when you have reaped its
harvest think u