"May we believe," asked Bertram, "that the tender fancy of the dying
princess was ever verified by the actual shelter here of a fugitive?"

"The story is ancient," replied Nawab Khan, "and I cannot say. The
lesson she taught would forbid the finding anywhere a Place of Rest."

But it neared the hour of the devout man's prayers and he left them.

"Nawab Khan," said Atmâ, "speaks not as he believes, for many are the
Havens of the Mohammedan."

"Ay," said Bertram, "and does not every creed too soon become a secure
retreat to the spirit of man to which God has denied the repose of
certainty. We crave knowledge which is withheld more earnestly than we
desire faith or hope, and we eagerly make even its semblance a foothold.
It appears to me, my friend, with whom I am grown bold, that you and I
may find in our less material beliefs as false a haven as the pilgrim
finds in his Mecca."

"You say well," said Atmâ thoughtfully, "it is not new to me. Thoughts
for which I cannot account have been borne in upon my soul, waking and
sleeping, by riverside or on mountain height, and I know and believe
that he who would find God must close his eyes and his ears."

"And the soul," said Bertram, "that knows an infallible guide, be it
voice of other man, or of his own reason, or volume of mystery, or
whatever it be, that soul walks not by faith. But why speak of a soul
finding God? The soul of man must be first found of Him, and it seems to
me that until thus adopted no soul would prefer faith to knowledge--thus
much might we learn of Nawab Khan."