For the Japanese and all that they had done in two short generations, he went so far as to express real admiration, a very rare thing with Oro, who was by nature critical.  I could see that mentally he put a white mark against their name.

India, too, really moved him.  He admired the ancient buildings at Delhi and Agra, especially the Taj Mahal.  This, he declared, was reminiscent of some of the palaces that stood at Pani, the capital city of the Sons of Wisdom, before it was destroyed by the Barbarians.

The English administration of the country also attracted a word of praise from him, I think because of its rather autocratic character.  Indeed he went so far as to declare that, with certain modifications, it should be continued in the future, and even to intimate that he would bear the matter in mind.  Democratic forms of government had no charms for Oro.

Amongst other places, we stopped at Benares and watched the funeral rites in progress upon the banks of the holy Ganges.  The bearers of the dead brought the body of a woman wrapped in a red shroud that glittered with tinsel ornaments.  Coming forward at a run and chanting as they ran, they placed it upon the stones for a little while, then lifted it up again and carried it down the steps to the edge of the river.  Here they took water and poured it over the corpse, thus performing the rite of the baptism of death.  This done, they placed its feet in the water and left it looking very small and lonely.  Presently appeared a tall, white-draped woman who took her stand by the body and wailed.  It was the dead one’s mother.  Again the bearers approached and laid the corpse upon the flaming pyre.

“These rites are ancient,” said Oro.  “When I ruled as King of the World they were practised in this very place.  It is pleasant to me to find something that has survived the changefulness of Time.  Let it continue till the end.”

Here I will cease.  These experiences that I have recorded are but samples, for also we visited Russia and other countries.  Perhaps, too, they were not experiences at all, but only dreams consequent on my state of health.  I cannot say for certain, though much of what I seemed to see fitted in very well indeed with what I learned in after days, and certainly at the time they appeared as real as though Oro and I had stood together upon those various shores.

Chapter XXI

Love’s Eternal Altar

Now of all these happenings I said very little to Bastin and Bickley.  The former would not have understood them, and the latter attributed what I did tell him to mental delusions following on my illness.  To Yva I did speak about them, however, imploring her to explain their origin and to tell me whether or not they were but visions of the night.

She listened to me, as I thought not without anxiety, from which I gathered that she too feared for my mind.  It was not so, however, for she said: