“What particularly impressed you in them?” Tempest asked.
“The demonstration that life is a laboratory in which the strength of the soul is tried.”
“And in the Vidyâ?”
“The fact that selfishness is the root of evil. That impressed me very much, primarily I suppose because it is true, but chiefly I think because I had not realized it before.”
Tempest nodded. Never had he heard a mondaine cite the Upanishads. In no drawing room had he ever heard the Vidyâ mentioned. In his life he had not dreamed of having a digest of each produced in an atmosphere dripping with frivolities. As he nodded he reconsidered this woman. From the first he had realized that she differed from the ordinary society type. Now he saw that she belonged to a superior world.
“Do you not admire them, too?” Leilah, who had also been considering him, inquired.
Tempest adjusted his monocle. “You see, you know, the Self, the All-Self, the One, the oneness of self with everything, the oneness of all things with One, these minor motifs of theirs I may admire but I do not grasp. On the contrary, there is a certain voluminous complexity about them that makes me gasp. None the less they advance certain ideas which, while curious to the few and to the many absurd, are yet so mathematically evident; the fact for instance——”
A servant announced:
“His Highness monseigneur le prince Paul de Montebianco!”
“Monsieur Harris!”