“‘What way, and what goddess?’ I asked of her.

“’The way of Love and Life!” she answered, ’that makes all the world to be, that made you, O seeker of Nirvana, and the goddess called Nature!’

“Again I asked where is that goddess, and behold! she drew herself up, looking most royal, and touching her ivory breast, she said, ’I am She.  Now kneel you down and do me homage!’

“My brethren, I knelt, yes, I kissed her foot, and then I fled away shamed and broken-hearted, and as I went she laughed, and cried:  ’Remember me when you reach Devachan, O servant of the Budda-saint, for though I change, I do not die, and even there I shall be with you who once gave me worship!’

“And it is so, my brethren, it is so; for though I obtained absolution for my sin and have suffered much for it through this, my next incarnation, yet I cannot be rid of her, and for me the Utter Peace is far, far away,” and Kou-en placed his withered hands before his face and sobbed outright.

A ridiculous sight, truly, to see a holy Khublighan well on the wrong side of eighty, weeping like a child over a dream of a beautiful woman which he imagined he had once dreamt in his last life more than two thousand years ago.  So the reader will say.  But I, Holly, for reasons of my own, felt deep sympathy with that poor old man, and Leo was also sympathetic.  We patted him on the back; we assured him that he was the victim of some evil hallucination which could never be brought up against him in this or any future existence, since, if sin there were, it must have been forgiven long ago, and so forth.  When his calm was somewhat restored we tried also to extract further information from him, but with poor results, so far as the priestess was concerned.

He said that he did not know to what religion she belonged, and did not care, but thought that it must be an evil one.  She went away the next morning with the army, and he never saw or heard of her any more, though it came into his mind that he was obliged to be locked in his cell for eight days to prevent himself from following her.  Yes, he had heard one thing, for the abbot of that day had told the brethren.  This priestess was the real general of the army, not the king or the queen, the latter of whom hated her.  It was by her will that they pushed on northwards across the desert to some country beyond the mountains, where she desired to establish herself and her worship.

We asked if there really was any country beyond the mountains, and Kou-en answered wearily that he believed so.  Either in this or in a previous life he had heard that people lived there who worshipped fire.  Certainly also it was true that about thirty years ago a brother who had climbed the great peak yonder to spend some days in solitary meditation, returned and reported that he had seen a marvellous thing, namely, a shaft of fire burning in the heavens beyond those same mountains, though whether this were a vision, or what, he could not say.  He recalled, however, that about that time they had felt a great earthquake.