I rubbed my feet on the soft carpet, and summoning all my strength, began to make the prescribed passes over my friend’s head and body.  Very gradually the look of life returned to his face, the generous blood welled up under the clear olive skin, the lips parted, and he sighed softly.  Animation, as always happens in such cases, began at the precise point at which it had been suspended, and his first movement was to continue his examination of the mouthpiece in his hand.  Then he looked up suddenly, and seeing me standing over him, gave a little shake, half turning his shoulders forward and back, and speaking once more in his natural voice, said—­

“I must have been asleep!  Have I?  What has happened?  Why are you standing there looking at me in that way?” Then, after a short interrogatory silence, his face changed and a look of annoyance shaded his features as he added in a low tone, “Oh!  I see.  It has happened to me once before.  Sit down.  I am all right now.”  He sipped a little sherbet and leaned back in his old position.  I begged him to go to bed, and prepared to withdraw, but he would not let me, and he seemed so anxious that I should stay, that I resumed my place.  The whole incident had passed in ten minutes.

“Stay with me a little longer,” he repeated.  “I need your company, perhaps your advice.  I have had a vision, and you must hear about it.”

“I thought as I sat here that my spirit left my body and passed out through the night air and hovered over Simla.  I could see into every bungalow, and was conscious of what passed in each, but there was only one where my gaze rested, for I saw upon a couch in a spacious chamber the sleeping form of one I knew.  The masses of fair hair were heaped as they fell upon the pillow, as if she had lain down weary of bearing the burden of such wealth of gold.  The long dark lashes threw little shadows on her cheeks, and the parted lips seemed to smile at the sweetness of the gently heaving breath that fanned them as it came and went.  And while I looked, the breath of her body became condensed, as it were, and took shape and form and colour, so that the image of herself floated up between her body and my watching spirit.  Nearer and nearer to me came the exquisite vision of beauty, till we were face to face, my soul and hers, high up in the night.  And there came from her eyes, as the long lids lifted, a look of perfect trust, and of love, and of infinite joy.  Then she turned her face southward and pointed to my life star burning bright among his lesser fellows; and with a long sweet glance that bid me follow where she led, her maiden soul floated away, half lingering at first, as I watched her; then, with dizzy speed, vanishing in the firmament as a falling star, and leaving no trace behind, save an infinitely sad regret, and a longing to enter with her into that boundless empire of peace.  But I could not, for my spirit was called back to this body.  And I bless Allah that he has given me to see her once so, and to know that she has a soul, even as I have, for I have looked upon her spirit and I know it.”