real vitality of the race; that by remaining true to their dreams, though starved of heart, the sons that come to them will be the lovers they dream of—­and bring the happiness they missed, to the daughters of other women.  For love is spirit—­the stuff of dreams—­and love is Giving....  He must bring to women again, lest they forget, this word:  that never yet has man sung, painted, prophesied, made a woman happy, nor in any way woven finer the spirit of his time, but that God first covenanted with his mother for the gift—­and, more often than not, the gift was startled into its supreme expression by the daughter of another....  All in a sentence, it summed at last, to Bedient alone,—­a flaming sentence for all women to hear:  Only through the potential greatness of women can come the militant greatness of men.

And so things appeared unto him to do, as he watched the miracle of the moon bringing forth the lineaments of the old God-Mother; and so the cliff became his Sinai.  On this last night, for a moment at least, he felt as must an immortal lover who has seen clearly the way of chivalry—­the task which was to be, as the Hindus say, the fruit of his birth....  Thus he would go down, face glowing with new and luminous resolves....  And once dawn was breaking as he descended, and the whir of wings aroused him.  Looking upward he saw (as did Another of visions), in the red beauty of morning—­a flock of swans flying off to the South.

* * * * *

Gobind must not be forgotten—­old Gobind, who appeared in Preshbend at certain seasons, and sat down in the shade of a camphor-tree, old and gnarled as he; but a sumptuous refuge, as, in truth was Gobind in the spirit.  The natives said that the austerities of Gobind were the envy of the gods; that he could hold still the blood in his veins from dusk to dawn; and make the listener understand many wonderful things about himself and the meaning of life.

The language had come to Bedient marvellously.  Literally it flowed into his mind, as in the rains a rising river finds its old bed of an earlier season.

“This is your home, Wanderer,” Gobind told him.  “Long have you travelled to and fro and long still must you wander, but you will come back again to the cool shadows, and to these—­” Gobind lifted his hand to point to the roof of the world.  The yellow cloth fell away from his arm, which looked like a dead bough blackened from many rains.  “For these are your mountains and you love these long shadows.  All Asia and the Islands you have searched for these shadows, and here you are content, for your soul is Brahman....  But you are not ready for Home.  You are not yet tired.  Long still must you wander.  Some sin of a former birth caused you to sink into the womb of a woman of the younger peoples.  You have yet to return to them—­as one coming down from the mountains, after the long summer, brings a song and a story for the heat-sick people of the plains to hear at evening——­”