‘Tell me,’ interrupted Kingston, jesting uneasily to hide his earnestness, ‘as you have told me so much--can you tell me in what shape I shall find her, if find her I ever shall? Surely what she did will have brought her greater beauty than ever, if what you say is true, that our rewards are automatically developed out of our actions? As for knowing her, on your theory that all love is memory, of course I shall know her, whether she has gone beyond knowing me herself or not. I shall feel it in my blood when we meet again, overwhelmingly, fiercely, as I suppose I must have known her from the first, when she reappeared for a month or two in my life, twenty years ago. But can you say what form the result of her beautiful actions will take this time? Will she be a queen or a beggar?’ Kingston laughed, trying to lighten the impression of his eagerness. But the old man sighed. ‘Sorrow, thick and thick, are you calling down upon yourself,’ he said, ‘the bitterness of vain longing, doubled and redoubled. How can I tell you when and where you may meet again? Wander from magic incantation to incantation, strengthening your disappointment as you strengthen your longing. And--at the end, that meeting which shall be only on one side. Dread that reunion, dread that rediscovery of the lost. You will not find the lost again; you will find only the new, more beautiful thing into which her own beautiful action has transformed that which seemed lost. For merit plays its part in change, inward and outward. Through what endless trials had the holy lady Yasodhara to come before her high spotless Karma brought her at last to the side of the Blessed One Himself. Through all the ages she had lived on, ever higher and holier, before she could attain the end. And why should that which wore a woman’s shape continue still a woman, in its glorification? It was the man’s courage that showed. Can you be certain that what she was is not now a man--a man, perhaps, weak and earthly, but, after all, a man, by virtue of that one instant in which all woman’s weaknesses died in her, and only the bravery held firm. Life is freer, bolder, wider for a man; should not the free, bold soul pass on into a more fitting frame, where its opportunities will be greater and its trammels fewer? But why look forward into the great darkness of desire? Her Karma may even yet have dreadful sorrows to work out, yet from one sorrow, at least, it is now free. But I had come to you to-night because, after all my many years of life and much questioning, it has come to me to see farther than many across the fields of life, and sometimes to hear voices that other ears are not opened to hear. So I heard the crying voice of your hunger growing fierce in its loneliness, and I saw its sorrow deepening down the road of the future, and it seemed to me that perhaps I might give you help in loosening the bonds that bind you to the wheel of false desire. But now I know once more, as all life has