"But tell me, shall I meet her again here—down on the good earth?"
"Your master cannot speak of that. If I should tell you what you ask, you could not turn your eyes upward from the dream of the valley-shrines.... Hold up your palms, my son. Master the red of flesh that will not let you wait in peace. So long as you can be destroyed by that, you are not ready for the greater meeting with the Beloved—"
"I could die, but it would not be better than this—"
"The true Brahman speaks in that saying. We shall not know the Holy Breath in death, if we fail to find it here in the life of flesh."
There were hours of this—backward and forward. Rajananda, who seemed hardly strong enough to hold his life to the withered body, could speak and answer tirelessly through the blinding day.
"But tell me," Romney asked at last, "has she a master to make easy these hours—a master to tell her the way to meet this hardest of all lessons—to wait?"
"She has a master," said the mystic, "but not an old man like Rajananda. She does not need to be reminded by a voice from without. It is easier for a woman to wait, my son. The faith of woman comes more quickly."
2
At Wampli that night, Romney read the last of the documents given him by Nifton Bend, the one designated to be opened at this point. As he had dimly anticipated, the papers concerned Rajananda who proved to be the power of the Asiatic section in the East, the guardian of the Eastern Gate to the alleged Inner Temple, and the highest of the forces in touch with Peking, politically. Of all the Gobi hierarchy, Rajananda was alone in retaining a name and personality used in the outer world. How close he was to the great Lohan, Romney's information did not even hazard.
The American was ordered to await the coming of Rajananda in Wampli, to place his case before this priest and to accept the judgment of the latter as to whether he should journey on farther for the ultimate decisions. In a word, if Rajananda cared to close the issues of the mission, either for good or ill, so far as the Big Three were concerned, Romney's out-journey was ended. On the contrary, if Rajananda refused to act, and advised him to carry his plea for the new party in China still higher, Romney was commanded to accept the advice and to continue his advance into the desert as directed.