"You mean that?"
"Yes. But first I will tell you that it is not the greater way."
"Why?"
"Any delay on the road to Tientsin now endangers your chance of seeing your leaders in life again. You accepted their mission. It is the work of a true lanoo to fulfil it."
"You think I did wrongly to delay in Nadiram on the way out?"
"I have never chided you for that. Others felt it failure, but they did not understand. You did not fail there. There were three, my son, who went to the Manger on swiftest camels, bearing gifts to the Child whom they found; and another who found his quest by the way, and when he was old and the last of his quest finished, he met the Master face to face.... It was Rajananda who made his desert children understand about your tarrying in Nadiram and who made my son's servant understand. But that is finished. It is different now. Delay now will leave your mission unfulfilled, and that, my son, would not leave the future shadowless—"
"But Anna Erivan—in the hands of strangers—thinking me dead. If she still lives, I must go to her. A day, an hour—"
"My son, what words were the last that you heard from the lips of this woman you love?"
"She asked me to remember that she was mine—body and soul—"
"Have you faith in that?"