How shall I describe the world we entered? The carvings upon the
walls had taken life - they had descended. It was a gathering of
the dreams men have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and
actual. They watched in a serenity that set them apart in an
atmosphere of their own - forms of indistinct majesty and august
beauty, absolute, simple, and everlasting. I saw them as one sees
reflections in rippled water - no more. But all faces turned to
the place where now a green and flowering leafage enshrined and
partly hid the living Nature Goddess, as she listened to a voice
that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only in glimpses of an
indescribable sweetness, but an influence came from her presence
like the scent of rainy pine forests, the coolness that breathes
from great rivers, the passion of Spring when she breaks on the
world with a wave of flowers. Healing and life flowed from it.
Understanding also. It seemed I could interpret the very silence
of the trees outside into the expression of their inner life, the
running of the green life-blood in their veins, the delicate
trembling of their finger-tips.

My companion and I were not heeded. We stood hand in hand like
children who have innocently strayed into a palace, gazing in
wonderment. The august life went its way upon its own occasions,
and, if we would, we might watch. Then the voice, clear and cold,
proceeding, as it were, with some story begun before we had
strayed into the Presence, the whole assembly listening in
silence.

"- and as it has been so it will be, for the Law will have the
blind soul carried into a body which is a record of the sins it
has committed, and will not suffer that soul to escape from