thoughts and partly with that habitual reverence which seemed to me
the due of things so long connected with secret hopes and fears. 'I
see,' said Michael Robartes, 'that you are still fond of incense, and
I can show you an incense more precious than any you have ever seen,'
and as he spoke he took the censer out of my hand and put the amulets
in a little heap between the _athanor_ and the _alembic_. I
sat down, and he sat down at the side of the fire, and sat there for
awhile looking into the fire, and holding the censer in his hand. 'I
have come to ask you something,' he said, 'and the incense will fill
the room, and our thoughts, with its sweet odour while we are
talking. I got it from an old man in Syria, who said it was made from
flowers, of one kind with the flowers that laid their heavy purple
petals upon the hands and upon the hair and upon the feet of Christ
in the Garden of Gethsemane, and folded Him in their heavy breath,
until he cried against the cross and his destiny.' He shook some dust
into the censer out of a small silk bag, and set the censer upon the
floor and lit the dust which sent up a blue stream of smoke, that
spread out over the ceiling, and flowed downwards again until it was
like Milton's banyan tree. It filled me, as incense often does, with
a faint sleepiness, so that I started when he said, 'I have come to
ask you that question which I asked you in Paris, and which you left
Paris rather than answer.'

He had turned his eyes towards me, and I saw them glitter in the
firelight, and through the incense, as I replied: 'You mean, will I
become an initiate of your Order of the Alchemical Rose? I would not
consent in Paris, when I was full of unsatisfied desire, and now that
I have at last fashioned my life according to my desire, am I likely
to consent?'