“Now the other traveller passed into profound musing, till his outer senses were locked as though in sleep; and he saw the place in which he was after the following manner and semblance. He saw the girdle of trees as the wall of a great temple, therein there were three courts, and at the centre a shrine. In the first court was the image of a woman bearing a child in her arms; about her were lights burning and the smell of incense, and the song of human praise; priests in rich vestments celebrated solemn rites, and worshippers, both male and female, old and young, bowed down before this mother and child. In the second court there was a dimness as of a starlit night; there was no incense save the smell of earth and flowers, no song but the song of birds, and of streams, and the boom of waves like the tones of an organ; no lights but strange fires that gleamed and flickered through the night, no worshippers save dim forms of the gracious ‘hidden peoples,’ the gods of wood and orchard, plain and tilth.
“In the third court was a turmoil of cold flame; those who served and worshipped there (if servitors and worshippers there were), were many-hued, transparent, flame-like; here was no human being—neither was there male nor female, but in that turmoil of fires were strange forms moving in time to music, and wonderful shapes that changed and gleamed and moved in marvellous sort with a motion and rhythm that had therein nothing earthly whereof tongue can rightly speak or pen set down; but throughout the turmoil of this wondrous dance there was an order and a purpose, for they moved in time to a great song that seemed like silence.
“But in the Shrine there was nothing visible; only from it a voice was heard crying:
“‘She who is worshipped in this temple is the Mother of all Faiths, past and present. She is worshipped as the Divine Mother of the Worlds, as the Power of Wisdom, as the Secret Rose, as star-strewn space, as Mary the Virgin, Mother of God; as the deep waters of the sea, also; and some there be who think of Her as woman. She is the Form Divine, Memory and Time; She is angel and man, woman and child, beast and bird, sky and cloud and flower, song of bird, dew, sunshine and rain, wind and water, snow and frost, tree and stream, priests’ chant and sacred writ, learning and holy rites. She is the Sacred Mirror of God, in Whom are all things visible and invisible. They who toil in Her service worship and praise Her, and of Her the Holy Child is born in every human heart. She, the sacred cup, and the holy bread; She, the lily of flame set in the waters of space; She, the waters whence it springs; She, the hearts of men, and their souls and bodies; She, the Holy Cave, the consecrated Manger wherein the Babe is cradled; She is the Mother of the Sacred Humanity whereby we enter the mystery of the Godhead. She, then is Nature and Beauty, the Power of God, the Builder of all Forms, the Mother of all Tales. Those sing of Her and praise Her who love to worship God as Divine Form rather than as hidden all-sustaining Life. For He, though he be One, is likewise manifold; and those who adore Him in the many praise Him in the sacred Form, eternal in the heavens when all earthly forms have passed like spray driven by the wind; Mary the Ever-Virgin, the Root of all the worlds, one with the life that sustains them, eternally inseparate from It. She is the Temple of God, the glorified body of the saint, the celestial garden of the souls made one; She is the Sacred Wood of the Cross, the Tree of Might and Beauty——’”
The man who told this tale ceased to speak. He was silent till the playwright touched his arm; he started:
“Is that the end?” said the playwright.
“It is the end,” said the man, dreamily. “There is nothing more to tell.”