“Only be not mistaken, she is no immortal; nothing is immortal.  She is but a being held back by her own pride, her own greatness if you will, upon the path towards Nirvana.  That pride will be humbled, as already it has been humbled; that brow of majesty shall be sprinkled with the dust of change and death, that sinful spirit must be purified by sorrows and by separations.  Brother Leo, if you win her, it will be but to lose, and then the ladder must be reclimbed.  Brother Holly, for you as for me loss is our only gain, since thereby we are spared much woe.  Oh! bide here and pray with me.  Why dash yourselves against a rock?  Why labour to pour water into a broken jar whence it must sink into the sands of profitless experience, and there be wasted, whilst you remain athirst?”

“Water makes the sand fertile,” I answered.  “Where water falls, life comes, and sorrow is the seed of joy.”

“Love is the law of life,” broke in Leo; “without love there is no life.  I seek love that I may live.  I believe that all these things are ordained to an end which we do not know.  Fate draws me on—­I fulfil my fate——­”

“And do but delay your freedom.  Yet I will not argue with you, brother, who must follow your own road.  See now, what has this woman, this priestess of a false faith if she be so still, brought you in the past?  Once in another life, or so I understand your story, you were sworn to a certain nature-goddess, who was named Isis, were you not, and to her alone?  Then a woman tempted you, and you fled with her afar.  And there what found you?  The betrayed and avenging goddess who slew you, or if not the goddess, one who had drunk of her wisdom and was the minister of her vengeance.  Having that wisdom this minister—­woman or evil spirit—­refused to die because she had learned to love you, but waited knowing that in your next life she would find you again, as indeed she would have done more swiftly in Devachan had she died without living on alone in so much misery.  And she found you, and she died, or seemed to die, and now she is re-born, as she must be, and doubtless you will meet once more, and again there must come misery.  Oh! my friends, go not across the mountains; bide here with me and lament your sins.”

“Nay,” answered Leo, “we are sworn to a tryst, and we do not break our word.”

“Then, brethren, go keep your tryst, and when you have reaped its harvest think upon my sayings, for I am sure that the wine you crush from the vintage of your desire will run red like blood, and that in its drinking you shall find neither forgetfulness nor peace.  Made blind by a passion of which well I know the sting and power, you seek to add a fair-faced evil to your lives, thinking that from this unity there shall be born all knowledge and great joy.

“Rather should you desire to live alone in holiness until at length your separate lives are merged and lost in the Good Unspeakable, the eternal bliss that lies in the last Nothingness.  Ah! you do not believe me now; you shake your heads and smile; yet a day will dawn, it may be after many incarnations, when you shall bow them in the dust and weep, saying to me, ’Brother Kou-en, yours were the words of wisdom, ours the deeds of foolishness;’” and with a deep sigh the old man turned and left us.