If the twopenny-halfpenny tambourine--which had been bedaubed with its white lilies and rampant butterfly by a suburban maiden lady for a mission sale, and, remaining over from that, had been bought in at half price by Mrs. Campbell for the adornment of her drawing-room,--had been indeed Jean Ziska's famous drum, Eshwara could hardly have been more restless than it was on the night after Vincent Dering had sung, "Oh! dem golden slippers!" to its accompaniment. The tune had occurred to him in an instant, without thought, simply as one he had sung more than once when doing bones and tambourine in a nigger troupe at a soldiers' sing-song. He had meant nothing by; it and yet the words, "Golden slippers on a golden stair, Golden slippers dat we'se got to wear," fitted their environment; that atmosphere of effort after something beyond, above the real, the actual; the inevitable climbing of a golden stair, the inevitable wearing of the golden shoes, the inevitable search after the golden gates which, found, will open upon Paradise. True, the Paradise differed to each pair of yearning eyes and weary feet; but the longing for it as a personal gain, spiritual or bodily, was identical. For Paradise is the Desire of the World still; whether men find it in the good they lost, or the Love which lost it for them. And in Eshwara that night the desire rose strenuously, militantly. Erda, packing her boxes in haste, since she and her aunt had arranged to start with the others at dawn, felt as if she had, at last, closed her hand firmly on the plough. There could be no looking back now. The golden slippers were on her feet, the golden stairs before her, the golden gates within sight. She had said good-by to Lance without a quiver. She even smiled softly, tenderly, as she set an unopened deal box to go with her others. It was one which the Reverend David had brought with him from England, and which had been made over to her, not without nods and winks, smiles and suspicions of tears, from her aunt. For it contained the wedding dress. It was a Moravian wedding dress of the old style, to suit Erda's fancy; and she had been quite anxious to see the delicate white muslin robe and the quaint little cap, with its bunch of orange blossoms, which was to mark her as both bride and matron. But it had seemed a pity, in careful Mrs. Campbell's opinion, to unpack it only to repack it, and run the needless risk of crushing its daintiness. So there in its box it lay still, untouched, unseen.