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enter into union with the Real and, according to attainment, see it as it is.

She was an interpreter because she believed this truth profoundly. She saw the spiritual essence beneath the lovely illusion of matter, and the air about her was radiant with the motion of strange forces for which the dull world has many names, aiming indeed at the truth, but falling, oh, how far short of her calm perception! She was of a House higher than the Household of Faith. She had received enlightenment. She believed because she had

seen.

V

Next day our camp was struck, and we turned our faces again to Srinagar and to the day of parting. I set down but one strange incident of our journey, of which I did not speak even to her.

We were camping at Bijbehara, awaiting our house-boat, and the site was by the Maharaja's lodge above the little town. It was midnight and I was sleepless the shadow of the near future was upon me. I wandered down to the lovely old wooden bridge across the Jhelum, where the strong young trees grow up from the piles. Beyond it the moon was shining on the ancient Hindu remains close to the new temple; and as I stood on the bridge, I could see the figure of a man in deepest meditation by the ruins. He was no European. I could see the straight, dignified folds of the robes. But it was not surprising that he should be there, and I should have thought no more of it, had I not heard at that instant from the farther side of the river the music of the Flute. I cannot hope to describe that music to any who have not heard it. Suffice it to say that, where it calls, he who hears must follow, whether in the body or the spirit. Nor can I now tell in which I followed. One day it will call me across the River of Death, and I shall ford it or sink in

the immeasurable depths, and either will be well.

But immediately I was at the other side of the river, standing by the stone Bull of Shiva where he kneels before the Symbol, and looking steadfastly upon me a few paces away was a man in the dress of a Buddhist monk. He wore the yellow robe that leaves one shoulder bare; his head was bare, also, and he held in one hand a small bowl like a stemless chalice. I knew I was seeing a very strange and inexplicable sight,

one that in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder aside, for I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible may well be the actual. His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If I compare it to the passionless gaze of the Sphinx, I misrepresent, for the Riddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a noble acquiescence and a content which, had it vibrated, must have passed into joy.

Words or their equivalent passed between us. I felt his voice.

'You have heard the music of the Flute?'

'I have heard.'

'What has it given?'

'A consuming longing.'

'It is the music of the Eternal. The creeds and the faiths are the words that men have set to that melody. Listening, it will lead you to Wisdom. Day by day you will interpret more surely.' 'I cannot stand alone.'

'You will not need. What has led you will lead you still. Through many. births it has led you. How should it fail?'

'What should I do?'
'Go forward.'

'What should I shun?'
'Sorrow and fear.'
'What should I seek?'
'Joy.'

'And the end?'

'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 that 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 afterward? 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 that it was but a loan and a 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 cœur fatigué! - 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 that we should not meet again.

And now my packing was finished, and, so 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.

'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.' "There was a dancer. She was Lilavanti, and was brought there to trap him; but when she saw him she loved him, and that was his ruin and hers. Trickery he would have known and escaped. Love caught him in an unbreakable net, and they fled down the Punjab, and no one knew any more. But I know. For two years they lived together, and she saw the agony in his heart the anguish of his broken vows, the face of the Blessed One receding into an infinite distance. She knew that every day added a link to the heavy Karma that was bound about the feet she loved, and her soul said, "Set him free," and her heart refused the torture. But her soul was the stronger. She set him free.'

--

'How?'

'She took poison. He became an ascetic in the hills, and died in peace, but with a long expiation upon him.'

'And she?'

'I am she.' 'You!' I heard my voice as if it were another man's. Was it possible that I a man of the twentieth centurybelieved this impossible thing? Impossible, and yet - What had I learned if not the unity of Time, the illusion of matter? What is the twentieth century, what the first? Do they not lie before the Supreme as one, and clean from our petty divisions? And I myself had seen what, if I could trust it, asserted the marvels that are no marvels to those who know.

"You loved him?' 'I love him.'

"Then there is nothing at all for me.' She resumed as if she had heard nothing.

'I have lost him for many lives. He stepped above me at once; for he was clean gold, though he fell; and though I have followed, I have not found. But that Buddhist beyond Islamabad

you shall hear now what he said. It was this. "The shut door opens, and this time he waits." I cannot yet say all it means, but there is no Lahore for me. I shall meet him soon.'

'Vanna, you would not harm yourself again?'

'Never. I should not meet him. But you will see. Now I can talk no more. I will be there to-morrow when you go, and ride with you to the poplar road.'

She passed like a shadow into her little dark cabin, and I was left alone. I will not dwell on that black loneliness of the spirit, for it has passed - it was the darkness of hell, a madness of jealousy, and could have no enduring life in any heart that had known her. But it was death while it lasted. I had moments of horrible belief, of horrible disbelief; but however it might be, I knew that she was out of reach forever. Near meyes! but only as the silver image of the moon floating in the water by the boat, with the moon herself cold myri

ads of miles away. I will say no more of that last eclipse of what she had wrought in me.

The bright morning came, sunny as if my joys were beginning instead of ending. Vanna mounted her horse, and led the way from the boat. I cast one long look at the little Kedarnath, the home of those perfect weeks, of such joy and sorrow as would have seemed impossible to me in the chrysalis of my former existence. Little Kahdra stood crying bitterly on the bank; the kindly folk who had served us were gathered, saddened and quiet.

How dear she looked, how kind, how gentle her appealing eyes, as I drew up beside her! She knew what I felt, that the sight of little Kahdra, crying as he said good-bye, was the last pull at my sore heart. Still she rode steadily on, and still I followed. Once she spoke.

'Stephen, there was a man in Peshawar, kind and true, who loved that Lilavanti, who had no heart for him. And when she died, it was in his arms, as a sister might cling to a brother; for the man she loved had left her. It seems that will not be in this life, but do not think I have been so blind that I did not know my friend.'

I could not answer it was the realization of the utmost I could hope, and it came like healing to my spirit. Better that bond between us, slight as most men might think it, than the dearest and closest with a woman not Vanna. It was the first thrill of a new joy in my heart the first, I thank the Infinite, of many and steadily growing joys and hopes that cannot be uttered here.

I bent to take the hand she stretched to me; but even as our hands touched, I saw, passing behind the trees by the road, the young man I had seen in the garden at Vernag-most beautiful, in the strange mitre of his jeweled diadem. His Flute was at his lips, and the music rang out sudden and crystal-clear, as if

a woodland god were passing to awaken all the joys of the dawn.

The horses heard, too. In an instant hers had swerved wildly, and she lay on the ground at my feet.

VI

Days had gone before I could recall what had happened then. I lifted her in my arms and carried her into the rest-house near at hand, and the doctor came and looked grave, and a nurse was sent from the Mission Hospital. No doubt all was done that was possible; but I knew from the first what it meant and how it would be. She lay in a white quietness, and the room was still as death. I remembered with unspeakable gratitude later that the nurse had been merciful and had not sent me away.

So Vanna lay all day and all night; and when the dawn came again, she stirred and motioned with her hand, although her eyes were closed. I understood, and, kneeling, I put my hand under her head, and rested it against my shoulder. Her faint voice murmured at my ear. 'I dreamed I was in the pine wood at Pahlgam, and it was the Night of No Moon, and I was afraid, for it was dark; but suddenly all the trees were covered with little lights like stars, and the greater light was beyond. Nothing to be afraid of.'

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'Nothing, beloved.'

'Believe what I have told you. For we shall meet again.'

I repeated, 'We shall meet again.'
In my arms she died.

Later, when all was over, I asked myself if I believed this, and answered with full assurance, Yes.

If the story thus told sounds incredible, it was not incredible to me. I had had a profound experience. What is a miracle? It is simply the vision of the Divine behind nature. It will come in different forms according to the eyes that see, but the soul will know that its perception is authentic.

I could not leave Kashmir, nor was there any need. On the contrary, I saw that there was work for me here among the people she had loved, and my first aim was to fit myself for that and for the writing I now felt was to be my career in life. After much thought, I bought the little Kedarnath and made it my home, very greatly to the satisfaction of little Kahdra and all the friendly people to whom I owed so much.

Vanna's cabin I made my sleepingroom, and it is the simple truth that the first night I slept in the place that was a Temple of Peace in my thoughts I had a dream of wordless bliss, and starting awake for sheer joy, I saw her face in the night, human and dear, looking upon me with that poignant sweetness which would seem to be the utmost revelation of love and pity. And as I stretched my hands, another face dawned solemnly from the shadow beside her, with grave brows bent on mine one I had known and seen in the ruins at Bijbehara. Outside, and very near, I could hear the silver weaving of the Flute that in India is the symbol of the call of the Divine. A dream; but it taught me to live. (The End)

'And I looked beyond Peshawar, farther than eyes could see; and in the ruins of the monastery where we stood, you and I - I saw him, and he lay with his head at the feet of the Blessed One. That is well, is it not?'

'Well, beloved.'

'And it is well I go? Is it not?' 'It is well.'

A long silence. The first sun-ray touched the floor. Again the whisper:

THE TWILIGHT OF PARLIAMENT

BY A. G. GARDINER

Ir is a fact of universal admission that the prestige of the British Parliament has not been at so low an ebb in living memory as it is to-day. We should have, I think, to go back to the time when George III, in his pursuit of personal government, packed the House of Commons with his creatures, to parallel the disrepute into which the present Parliament has fallen. The House of Commons has lost its authority over the public mind and its influence upon events. The press has largely ceased to report its proceedings, and the scrappy descriptive summary has taken the place of the full-dress verbatim reports with which we were familiar a few years ago. This is no doubt largely due to the revolution in the press which has replaced the sober seriousness of the past by a tendency to keep the public amused with sensation and stunts. But the fact does reflect the public sense of the decadence of Parliament.

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And there is an odd touch of irony in this that the depreciation affects the popular House much more than the House of Lords. For generations the latter has been a threatened institution, the last hope of impossible causes and the bugbear of the reformer. Its record of stupid opposition to every movement of enlightened and rational change has been the tradition of a century; but it seemed that, with the great Budget fight of 1910 and the passing of the Parliament Act, its power for mischief had been finally controlled. It

I

was an ogre that had lost its teeth and its claws, and was henceforth harmless. And behold! Just at the moment when the representative House is at last based on the broadest possible franchise, when the suffrage is universal and women have the vote, we are confronted with the spectacle of a House of Commons so negligible as to be almost beneath contempt, and so mute and servile that, by comparison, the hereditary Chamber stands out in contrast as the guardian of public liberties and free institutions. For long years Liberals have been fighting for a thoroughly representative system and for imposing restraint upon the reactionary tendencies of the Upper House. And having accomplished their aim, they find that they have to turn, for the experience of whatever remnant of enlightened and liberal-minded opinion there remains, from the House of Commons to the House of Lords. There at least an occasional weighty voice is heard in protest against the follies of the government. There at least is some reminiscence of the spirit of independent criticism, which has certainly vanished from a House of Commons that exists simply to register the decrees of a ministry.

If we seek to discover the causes of the decline of the Parliamentary institution, the most general conclusion will be that it is an incident in the convulsion of the war. There can, of course, be no doubt on this point. It is the war

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