Amidst the hundred reflections from the
temple he seemed to see each separate picture as the monotonous voice
called it up before his mind, and always it was his own face which
shimmered among the shadowy minarets, and always it was a familiar voice
calling him through the ages which whispered to him from the trembling
leaves of the Bo-Tree as it hung its branches down to the water's edge.
"Tell me more, for thy words have drawn the veil closer about the future!"
His pleading received no response. The priest remained motionless,
passive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and
from that moment his lips were closed, and he passed his once loved pupil
with eyes that seemed fixed far ahead on a world visible only to himself.
Neither in his words or manner had there been any anger or reproach, but a
perfect resignation which walled him off from every human emotion, and
Nehal Singh went his way, conscious that the world lay before him and that
he was free. The great dividing wall had turned to air, and he had passed
through, satisfied but not a little troubled, as a man is who finds that
he has struck at shadows.
Afterward he told himself that the walls had always been shadows, the
links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague
dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all
over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his.
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