"What is he dreaming?"

"Not dreaming - seeing. Peace. He sits at the point where time
and infinity meet. To attain that vision was the aim of the monks
who lived here."

"Did they attain?" I found myself speaking as if she could
certainly answer.

"A few. There was one, Vasettha, the Brahman, a young man who had
renounced all his possessions and riches, and seated here before
this image of the Blessed One, he fell often into the mystic
state. He had a strange vision at one time of the future of
India, which will surely be fulfilled. He did not forget it in
his rebirths. He remembers-"

She broke off suddenly and said with forced indifference, - "He
would sit here often looking out over the mountains; the monks
sat at his feet to hear. He became abbot while still young. But
his story is a sad one."

"I entreat you to tell me."

She looked away over the mountains. "While he was abbot here,-
still a young man,- a famous Chinese Pilgrim came down through
Kashmir to visit the Holy Places in India. The abbot went forward
with him to Peshawar, that he might make him welcome. And there
came a dancer to Peshawar, named Lilavanti, most beautiful! I
dare not tell you her beauty. I tremble now to think-"