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AND THE FIRST VOICE WAS THE VOICE OF THE WAVES


[Illustration: And the First Voice was the Voice of the Waves (see
king004.png)]

It was nearing the fall of day when first the Pilgrim laid himself to
meditate upon his couch in The Quiet Room.

Without the Temple, the tall trees rustled softly their glossy leaves
and over the flower-figured carpet of green the sunlight and shadow
fairies danced along the lanes of gold. High in the blue above, the
fairy cloud-fleets were drifting--drifting--idly floating. Over the
Beautiful Sea, the glad wave fairies ran one after the other from beyond
the far horizon to the sandy shore.

In The Quiet Room where the Pilgrim lay, it was very, very, still. Only
the liquid music of the waves came through the open window--came to the
Pilgrim clearer and sweeter than the sweetest notes from clear toned
bells.

And after a little there was in the music of the waves a Voice.

Said the Voice: "To thee, O Hadji, I come from the Beautiful Sea; the
interminable, unfathomable sea, that begins at the Outer-Edge-Of-Things
and stretches away into Neverness. I speak from out the Deeps Beneath. I
tell of the Great That Is. I am a Voice of Life, O Hadji, and mine it is