a message to a man you know who should be expecting to hear from
me. Tell him I shall be at the Tashigong Monastery when he
reaches Gyumur beyond the Shipki. Tell him I have the
information he wants and I will willingly go on with him to
Yarkhand and his destination. He need not arrange for men beyond
Gyumur. All is fixed. So sorry to bother you, old man, but I
don't know Ormond's address, except that he was with you and has
gone up Simla way. And of course he will be keen to hear the
thing is settled."

Amazing. I remembered the message I had heard and this man's
words rang true and kindly, but what could it mean? I really did
not question farther than this for now I could not doubt that I
was guided. Stronger hands than mine had me in charge, and it
only remained for me to set forth in confidence and joy to an end
that as yet I could not discern. I turned my face gladly to the
wonder of the mountains.

Gladly - but with a reservation. I was leaving a friend and one
whom I dimly felt might one day be more than a friend - Brynhild
Ingmar. That problem must be met before I could take my way. I
thought much of what might be said at parting. True, she had the
deepest attraction for me, but true also that I now beheld a
quest stretching out into the unknown which I must accept in the
spirit of the knight errant. Dare I then bind my heart to any
allegiance which would pledge me to a future inconsistent with
what lay before me? How could I tell what she might think of the
things which to me were now real and external - the revelation of
the only reality that underlies all the seeming. Life can never
be the same for the man who has penetrated to this, and though it