* * * * * We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain all the gradations. The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of the Christ. II ... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to work one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how worthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on vellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted butter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the gardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time." There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose gardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how far they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have found--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the confirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing.