Brother, ask me not what she was like, nay, I will say no more.

Oh! my sin, my sin.

I am slipping backward and you draw my black shame out into the light of day.
Nay, I will confess it that you may know how vile a thing I am--I whom perhaps you have thought holy--like yourselves.

That woman, if woman she were, lit a fire in my heart which will not burn out, oh! and more, more," and Kou-en rocked himself to and fro upon his stool while tears of contrition trickled from beneath his horn spectacles, "_she made me worship her!_ For first she asked me of my faith and listened eagerly as I expounded it, hoping that the light would come into her heart; then, after I had finished she said--"'So your Path is Renunciation and your Nirvana a most excellent Nothingness which some would think it scarce worth while to strive so hard to reach.

Now _I_ will show you a more joyous way and a goddess more worthy of your worship.' "'What way, and what goddess ?' I asked of her.
"'The way of Love and Life!" she answered, 'that makes all the world to be, that made _you_, O seeker of Nirvana, and the goddess called Nature!' "Again I asked where is that goddess, and behold! she drew herself up, looking most royal, and touching her ivory breast, she said, 'I am She.
Now kneel you down and do me homage!' "My brethren, I knelt, yes, I kissed her foot, and then I fled away shamed and broken-hearted, and as I went she laughed, and cried: 'Remember me when you reach Devachan, O servant of the Budda-saint, for though I change, I do not die, and even there I shall be with you who once gave me worship!' "And it is so, my brethren, it is so; for though I obtained absolution for my sin and have suffered much for it through this, my next incarnation, yet I cannot be rid of her, and for me the Utter Peace is far, far away," and Kou-en placed his withered hands before his face and sobbed outright.
A ridiculous sight, truly, to see a holy Khublighan well on the wrong side of eighty, weeping like a child over a dream of a beautiful woman which he imagined he had once dreamt in his last life more than two thousand years ago.