“Joy. Wisdom. They are the Light and Dark of the Divine.” A cold breeze passed and touched my forehead. I was still standing in the middle of the bridge above the water gliding to the Ocean, and there was no figure by the Bull of Shiva. I was alone. I passed back to the tents with the shudder that is not fear but akin to death upon me. I knew I had been profoundly withdrawn from what we call actual life, and the return is dread. The days passed as we floated down the river to Srinagar. On board the Kedarnath, now lying in our first berth beneath the chenars near and yet far from the city, the last night had come. Next morning I should begin the long ride to Baramula and beyond that barrier of the Happy Valley down to Murree and the Punjab. Where afterwards? I neither knew nor cared. My lesson was before me to be learned. I must try to detach myself from all I had prized--to say to my heart it was but a loan and no gift, and to cling only to the imperishable. And did I as yet certainly know more than the A B C of the hard doctrine by which I must live? “Que vivre est difficile, O mon cocur fatigue!”--an immense weariness possessed me--a passive grief. Vanna would follow later with the wife of an Indian doctor. I believed she was bound for Lahore but on that point she had not spoken certainly and I felt we should not meet again. And now my packing was finished, and, as far as my possessions went, the little cabin had the soulless emptiness that comes with departure. I was enduring as best I could. If she had held loyally to her pact, could I do less. Was she to blame for my wild hope that in the end she would relent and step down to the household levels of love? She sat by the window--the last time I should see the moonlit banks and her clear face against them. I made and won my fight for the courage of words. “And now I’ve finished everything--thank goodness! and we can talk. Vanna--you will write to me?” “Once. I promise that.” “Only once? Why? I counted on your words.” “I want to speak to you of something else now. I want to tell you a memory. But look first at the pale light behind the Takht-i-Suliman.” So I had seen it with her. So I should not see it again. We watched until a line of silver sparkled on the black water, and then she spoke again. “Stephen, do you remember in the ruined monastery near Peshawar, how I told you of the young Abbot, who came down to Peshawar with a Chinese pilgrim? And he never returned.” “I remember. There was a Dancer.”