In Oman’s case, the effect of the silent hours, which began to be visible after two months of Vihara life, was one of increasing dignity and age. He had entered the Vihara a youth, of extremely boyish appearance, with shyest manners. He had been thoroughly crude, and so awkward before older men that he had given an early impression of stupidity. Now all this was altered. He was quiet, grave-eyed, thoughtful-looking; but his manner, filled with self-control, was almost impressive. His grasp of the teachings of the Dharma had been quick, his questions keen and pointed. Moreover, during the periods of relaxation, he began to keep himself apart from his fellows, but was often to be seen talking with his master, Hushka, or some one of the older monks of Hushka’s faction. And it was among the novices, who began to look up to him, that the idea first originated that Oman was to receive his Upasampada at the end of the Vassa season, instead of waiting the full year of novitiate. By the first of August, with the Vassa half gone, Oman began to perceive that he was happy:—happy as he had never believed happiness itself could be. It seemed to him that he lacked no earthly joy. Hushka, his Saint, the man he looked up to as the perfect model of virtue and unselfishness, was one of his four masters; and Oman was much with him. Apart from this companionship, he found that he desired nothing. Solitude was not now loneliness. But though, with the ineradicable instinct of the Brahman born, he kept himself aloof from his fellow-novices, they seemed never to resent this, but rather looked up to him as one of higher caste than they, and one that had, consequently, a right to exclusiveness. Moreover, through the whole Vihara, even by Sugata himself, Oman was spoken of as a scholar of high promise, such a one as their decadent community now rarely saw. Treated with respect on every hand, the memory of his old, marked days growing dim within him, it seemed to Oman that his cup of happiness was full. He was mastering the primal, the greatest difficulties of a religion which, as it opened, became more and more beautiful to him. In certain ecstatic hours he saw himself attaining to the highest state, Arahatship, where pale Nirvana gleamed like a silver armor of repose around the passionate soul. His nature was already under subjection; and he no longer doubted that it was wholly conquerable. The way was stretching out before him straight and smooth, the last boulder lifted away, when, suddenly, out of the clear sky, came a thunder-bolt that laid waste the fair country of his life, and left him standing alone, terrified, a yawning chasm at his feet, the wilderness on either hand.