"It is but bringing a greater destructiveness than fire and steel," answered Tsing Hsia. "War will end when its full hideousness is perceived by the many. Pestilence will but hasten the day."
Romney was amazed that these saints who would not have crushed a worm, who knew not the taste of red meat, could thus sacrifice an empire for the good of the future as they saw it. Awe held him, at the completeness with which they ignored the individual life personally and nationally, regarding spirit and not flesh in every thought. They had not even asked for the details which had so harrowed his own heart. To them, the globe was the plane of a spiritual experiment, and not property for a group of divided peoples.
Rajananda seemed very little and dry. His hand came out to the American. He asked to be lifted a little nearer the pool. He dipped his hands in the pure water and covered them again in the Sannysin robe. The faces of the two brethren were turned to him, waiting for him to speak. After long preliminary, he said, perceiving only the future as was his fashion:
"The dream is in the world. Man will unite with his brother, race to race; and war shall be no more. Nowhere in the world has this dream, that broods upon the planet, come nearer to finding its expression in action than through the labours of this party of which our son brings tidings. But this party shall pass without knowing the material fruit of its clean desire. Its business has to do with conception, not with birth. The time of birth is not far as men reckon years, but it is not so near as these dreamers and toilers of New China believe.... They shall pass. The ancient order of Empire shall overpower them. Even now they are in the folds of the night that still lingers upon the face of the world. Asia shall be richer for their thought, but from others shall come the action. Carry to them, my son, by word of mouth the message of peace and good will from the desert. Our approval in script may find no hands to accept it, at least no party to profit by it."
Rajananda now spoke directly to Romney:
"Our westward journey is ended. To-night we depart once more, each for his own country. It has been good to see these brothers again in the flesh. In spirit we have been one these many years.... Chi Yuan, will you see to the preparations for travel, for the night is coming quickly. Our messenger must make haste in returning or he shall not find ears to pour our blessing into.
"I will return with you to Rhadassim," said Tsing Hsia.
"And I," said the plaintive Chi Yuan, "shall sit many days by this pool, meditating upon the coming and the departure of my beloved companions."
... That night, Romney smiled into the starry dark. The great northern stars burned near—Vega, Arcturus, Antares, Altair. No Inner Temple, no arcanum; just waiting and travel, broken sleep of nights and unbroken journeys by day; no phenomena, just sand and sky and low villages, flat upon the desert and burned gold-brown; no miracle but that of love, no mystery but the deep mystery of life. The white dromedary sped forward in silence, making the pace for the rested camels.... It was all haste now. The old master paused not. His desert children had been repeatedly enjoined for more rapid speed on the way to Rhadassim.... Romney's mind sped forward, beyond, to Wampli, almost to Nadiram ten days away—to the point in the desert where the Dugpas had divided, where his heart had met the hardest human test, and pulsed on.
3