That was much, but later, the sunshine was no bar, the bond strengthened and there have been days in the heights of the hills, in the depths of the woods, when I saw her as in life, passing at a distance, but real and lovely. Life? She had never lived as she did now—a spirit, freed and rejoicing. For me the door she had opened would never shut. The Presences were about me, and I entered upon my heritage of joy, knowing that in Kashmir, the holy land of Beauty, they walk very near, and lift up the folds of the Dark that the initiate may see the light behind.
So I began my solitary life of gladness. I wrote, aided by the little book she had left me, full of strangest stories, stranger by far than my own brain could conceive. Some to be revealed—some to be hidden. And thus the world will one day receive the story of the Dancer of Peshawar in her upward lives, that it may know, if it will, that death is nothing—for Life and Love are all.
THE INCOMPARABLE LADY
A STORY OF CHINA WITH A MORAL
It is recorded that when the Pearl Empress (his mother) asked of the philosophic Yellow Emperor which he considered the most beautiful of the Imperial concubines, he replied instantly: “The Lady A-Kuei”: and when the Royal Parent in profound astonishment demanded bow this could be, having regard to the exquisite beauties in question, the Emperor replied;
“I have never seen her. It was dark when I entered the Dragon Chamber and dusk of dawn when I rose and left her.”
Then said the Pearl Princess;
“Possibly the harmony of her voice solaced the Son of Heaven?”
But he replied;