Julius would talk freely of certain aspects of this period, of various practices, physical, mental, spiritual, and of gorgeous ceremonies that were stimulating as well as true, pertaining undoubtedly to some effective worship of the sun, that resulted in the obtaining of enormous energy by the worshippers; but after a certain point he would say no more, and would deliberately try to shift back to some other “layer” altogether. And it was sheer cowardice in me that prevented my forcing a declaration. I burned to know, yet was afraid. “I do wish I could remember better,” I said once. “It comes gradually of itself,” he answered, “and best of all when you’re not thinking at all. The top part gets thin, and suddenly you see down into clear deep water. The top part, of course, is recent; it smothers the older things.” “Like thick sand, mine is,” I said, “heaps and heaps of it.” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “The pictures of To-day hide those of Yesterday,” he explained. “You can’t remember two things at once. If your head is stuffed with what’s happening at the moment, you can’t expect to remember what happened a month ago. Dig back. It’s trying that starts it moving.” Ancient as the stars themselves appeared the origins of our friendship and affection of to-day. “Then I didn’t get as far as you--in those Temple Days?” I asked. He glanced sharply at me beneath his long dark eyelids. He hesitated a moment. “You began,” he answered presently in a low voice, “but got caught later by--something in the world--fighting, or money, or a woman--something sticky like that. And you left me for a time.” Any temptation that enticed the soul from “real knowledge” he described as “sticky.” “For several sections you fooled with things that counted for the moment, but were not carried over through the lot. You came back to the real ones--but too late.” His voice sank down into a whisper; his face was grave and troubled. Shrinking stole over me. There was the excitement that he was going to tell me something, yet the dread, too, that I should hear it. “But now,” he went on, half to himself and half to me, “we can put that right. Our chance--at last--is coming.” These last words he uttered beneath his breath. And then he abruptly shifted the subject, leaving me with a strangely disquieting emotion that I should be drawn against my will into something that I dreaded yet could not possibly avoid. The expression of his face chilled my heart. He pulled me down upon the grass beside him. “You’ve got to burrow down inside yourself,” he went on earnestly, raising his voice again to its normal pitch, “that’s where it all lies buried. Once you get it up by yourself, you’ll understand. Then you can help me.”