Every evening, whenever I could, I used to walk out alone into the open plain to feast my soul on the splendid scene. In the stern glacier region round K2 had had to brace myself up and to summon up all that was toughest within me in order to cope with the terribly exacting conditions in which I found myself. In the presence of these calm but fervent sunsets there was a different feeling. I had a sense of expansion, a longing to let myself go. And I would feel myself craving to let myself go out all I could into these glowing depths of light and colour, and trying to open myself out to their beauty, that as much as possible of it should flow into me and glorify my whole being. I had the feeling that in those sunsets there was _any_ length for my soul to go out to--that there was _infinite_ room there for the soul's expansion. There was inexhaustible glory for the soul to absorb, and the soul was thirsting for it and could never have enough. Evening after evening came to me, too--quite unconsciously, and as it were inevitably--Shelley's words (slightly altered): "Be thou, spirit bright, My spirit! Be thou me, most glorious one! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy." It was not that there was any particular message that I had to give. But there was aroused in me just this simple, insistent longing to let others know what glory there was in the world, and to be able to communicate to them something of the joy I was then feeling in beholding it. I was highly privileged in having this opportunity of witnessing a Tibetan sunset's splendours. I was yearning for others to share my enjoyment with me. The white radiance of the glacier region instils into us a sense of purity, and without the purity of heart which that stern region exacts we cannot see the sunset's glory in all its fulness. But now in these Tibetan sunsets we have not purity alone, but warmth and richness as well. They give an impression of infinity of glory. We catch alight from their consuming glory, and our hearts flame up in correspondence with them. The fervent glow in the Heart of Nature kindles a like glow in our own hearts; and we are enraptured by the Beauty. On our misty island we are apt to connect sunsets with coming darkness and a black end of things. And in gazing on them we are prone to have a sense of sadness mingled with our joy. They seem to mean for us a passage from light to darkness, and from life to death. But in the deserts we have no such feeling. As day imperceptibly fades away it is not black darkness that succeeds, but a light that enables us to see farther, a mellower light that enables us to see the Universe at large. From this earthly life we are transported to a higher, intenser, ampler life among the stars.