Therefore cease from questioning the high decrees of destiny which thou canst not understand and be content to suffer, remembering that all joy grows from the root of pain.

Moreover, know this for thy comfort, that the wisdom which thou hast shall grow and gather on thee and with it thy beauty and thy power; also that at the last thou shalt look upon my face again, in token whereof I leave to thee my symbol, the _sistrum_ that I bear, and with it this command.
Follow that false priest of mine wherever he may go and avenge me upon him, and if thou lose him there, wait while the generations pass till he return again.

Such and no other is thy destiny.' "Allan, the vision faded and when I awoke the lights of dawn played upon the image of the goddess in the sanctuary.

They played, moreover, upon the holy jewelled thing that in my dream her hand had held, the _sistrum_ of her worship, shaped like the loop of life, the magic symbol that she had vowed to me, wherewith goes her power, which henceforth was mine.
"I took it and followed after the priest Kallikrates, to whom thenceforward I was bound by passion's ties that are stronger than all the goddesses in this wide universe." Here I, Allan, could contain myself no longer and asked, "What for ?" then, fearing her wrath, wished that I had been silent.
But she was not angry, perhaps because this tale of her interviews with goddesses, doubtless fabled, had made her humble, for she answered quietly, "By Aphrodite, or by Isis, or both of them I did not know.

All I knew was that I _must_ seek him, then and evermore, as seek I do to-day and shall perchance through aeons yet unborn.