“I found you again, a different man, a far happier man, though you would hardly allow that.  A sweet uncertainty of the future half-tinged your joy with a shadow of sadness, which you had not known before:  but love sadness is only the shading and gentle pencilling in love’s wondrous picture, whereby the whole light of the painting is made clearer and stronger.  A new world opened out before you in endless vistas of untold and undreamed bliss.  You looked back at your former self, so careless and sunny, so consciously happy in the strong sense of life and power, and you wondered how you could have been even contented through so many years.  The good and evil deeds of your past life lost colour and perspective, and fell back into a dull, flat background, against which the ineffable vision of beautiful and immortal womanhood stood forth in transcendent glory.  The eternal womanly element of the great universe beckoned you on, as it did Doctor Faustus of old.  You had hitherto accepted woman and ignored womanhood, as so many of the followers of the prophet have always done.  Henceforth there was to be a change, entire, complete, and enduring.  No doubts now, or careless scepticism; no cant about women having no souls and no individual being; you had made a great step to a better understanding of the world you live in.  Filled with a new life, you went on your way rejoicing and longing to do great deeds for her who had come into your destiny.  From dawn to sunset, and from evening to dawn, one picture ever was before you leading you on.  You were ready to run any risk for a smile and a blush of pleasure, you were willing to sacrifice anything and everything for her praise.  And when, down there among the mango-trees in the Terai, your lips first touched hers and your arm pressed her to your side, the joy that was yours was as the joy of the immortals.”

Ram Lal paused, and Isaacs, who had been sitting by the table, stony and dry-eyed, hid his face in his hands, clutching with his white fingers among his bright black hair—­all that seemed left to him of life, so dead and ashy was his face.  He remained thus without looking up, as the old man continued.

“Think not, dear friend and brother, that I have come here to dwell needlessly on your grief, to rouse again the keen agonies that have so lately burned through and through you to the quick.  I love you well, and would but trace the past in order to paint the future.  All that you felt and knew in those short days of perfect love on earth was good and true and noble, and shall not be forgotten hereafter.  But last night closed the second of your three destinies—­as true love always must close on earth—­in bitter grief and sorrow because the one is gone before.  Rather should you rejoice, Abdul Hafiz, that she is gone in virgin whiteness, whither ere long you shall follow and be with her till time shall chase the crumbling world out over the broad quicksands of eternity, and nought shall survive of all this but the pure and the