The doorway between the pillars, which opened upon the terrace of the roof, was covered with a heavy curtain of the colour of a ripe pomegranate, embroidered with innumerable golden rays shooting upward from the floor.  In effect the room was like a quiet, starry night, all azure and silver, flushed in the East with rosy promise of the dawn.  It was, as the house of a man should be, an expression of the character and spirit of the master.

He turned to his friends when the song was ended, and invited them to be seated on the divan at the western end of the room.

“You have come to-night,” said he, looking around the circle, “at my call, as the faithful scholars of Zoroaster, to renew your worship and rekindle your faith in the God of Purity, even as this fire has been rekindled on the altar.  We worship not the fire, but Him of whom it is the chosen symbol, because it is the purest of all created things.  It speaks to us of one who is Light and Truth.  Is it not so, my father?”

“It is well said, my son,” answered the venerable Abgarus.  “The enlightened are never idolaters.  They lift the veil of the form and go in to the shrine of the reality, and new light and truth are coming to them continually through the old symbols.”  “Hear me, then, my father and my friends,” said Artaban, very quietly, “while I tell you of the new light and truth that have come to me through the most ancient of all signs.  We have searched the secrets of nature together, and studied the healing virtues of water and fire and the plants.  We have read also the books of prophecy in which the future is dimly foretold in words that are hard to understand.  But the highest of all learning is the knowledge of the stars.  To trace their courses is to untangle the threads of the mystery of life from the beginning to the end.  If we could follow them perfectly, nothing would be hidden from us.  But is not our knowledge of them still incomplete?  Are there not many stars still beyond our horizon—­lights that are known only to the dwellers in the far south-land, among the spice-trees of Punt and the gold mines of Ophir?”

There was a murmur of assent among the listeners.

“The stars,” said Tigranes, “are the thoughts of the Eternal.  They are numberless.  But the thoughts of man can be counted, like the years of his life.  The wisdom of the Magi is the greatest of all wisdoms on earth, because it knows its own ignorance.  And that is the secret of power.  We keep men always looking and waiting for a new sunrise.  But we ourselves know that the darkness is equal to the light, and that the conflict between them will never be ended.”

“That does not satisfy me,” answered Artaban, “for, if the waiting must be endless, if there could be no fulfilment of it, then it would not be wisdom to look and wait.  We should become like those new teachers of the Greeks, who say that there is no truth, and that the only wise men are those who spend their lives in discovering and exposing the lies that have been believed in the world.  But the new sunrise will certainly dawn in the appointed time.  Do not our own books tell us that this will come to pass, and that men will see the brightness of a great light?”