Lady sat. Her attendants were small satyr-like spirits of the
wilds, piping and fluting, in place of the reclining maiden. The
sweeping scrolls of a great halo encircled her whole person. Then
how could I tell what this neary obliterated carving had been? I
groped for the answer and could not find it. I doubted-

"Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root
That takes the reason captive?"

Memory rushed over me like the sea over dry sands. A girl - there
had been a girl - we had stood with clasped hands to hear a
strange music, but in spite of the spiritual intimacy of those
moments I could not recall her face. I saw it cloudy against a
background of night and dream, the eyes remote as stars, and so
it eluded me. Only her presence and her words sur- vived; "We
meet in the Ninth Vibration. All here is true." But the Ninth
Vibration itself was dream-land. I had never heard the phrase - I
could not tell what was meant, nor whether my apprehension was
true or false. I knew only that the night had taken her and the
dawn denied her, and that, dream or no dream, I stood there with
a pang of loss that even now leaves me wordless.

A bird sang outside in the acacias, clear and shrill for day, and
this awakened my senses and lowered me to the plane where I
became aware of cold and hunger, and was chilled with dew. I
passed down the tumbled steps that had been a stately ascent the
night before and made my way into the jungle by the trail, small
and lost in fern, by which we had come. Again I wandered, and it
was high noon before I heard mule bells at a distance, and, thus