should I fail to find thee anywhere?" I said. "But let us hope that it will be in this world."
"Here everything is uncertain, and even the moment in which we now speak is not ours, but it will be otherwise in Paradise."
"Ah! Vasitthi," I sighed, "is there a Paradise—and where does it lie?"
"Where the sun sets," she replied, with complete conviction, "lies the Paradise of Infinite Light; and for all who have the courage to despise the earthly, and to fix their thoughts upon that place of bliss, there waits a pure birth from the bosom of a lotus flower. The first craving for that Paradise causes a bud to appear in the holy waters of the crystal seas; every pure thought, every good deed, causes it to grow and develop; while all evil committed in thought, word, and deed gnaws like a worm within it, and brings it near to withering away."
Her eyes shone like temple lights as she spoke thus in a voice which sounded like sweetest music. Then she raised her hand and pointed over the: dark tops of the sinsapa trees to where the Milky Way, with a soft radiance upon it as of glowing alabaster, lay along the dark purple star-sown field of heaven.
"Look there, Kamanita," she cried, "the heavenly Gunga! Let us swear by its silver waters—which feed the lotus seas of yonder fields of the blest—to fix our whole souls upon the preparing of an eternal home there for our love."
Strangely moved, completely carried out of myself, and agitated to the very depths of my being, I raised my hand to hers, and our hearts thrilled as one at the divine thought that, at that instant, in endless immensities of space, high above the storm of this earthly existence, a
