Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/43

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The Forbidden Door


that gets away from you; you can't get close enough to it to analyse it; you know it's there, but you can't give it a name. Even the little simple things seem somehow different. I've stood for hours outside a Buddhist temple, just listening to a woman praying that prayer of theirs—'Om mani padme Hum!' until I could almost fancy I was a Buddhist myself, praying with her. There's mystery all through it to me, and always will be. You see things and know them to exist, as well as you know anything, and can't account for them. And—well, once or twice I haven't seen things, but I knew they were there all the same. I think it must be what's behind all this—the past back of it, that makes it so deuced queer. Why, when I was in Darjeeling——"

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