Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/209

 to wisdom in matters spiritual. There men are satisfied to leave such things to priests whose mission, it appears, is to  terrorize the ignorant, to distort and suppress such few facts as they possess; to load down their barbarous worship with  senseless forms and ceremonies, until all knowledge of the  Divine principle is obliterated, and all freedom of thought  crushed. Even among the few enlightened minds existing on this planet a singular condition of affairs obtains; for  these are for the most part men steeped in selfishness who  strive to conceal rather than promulgate spiritual truth. Not that individual minds do not exist whose enlightenment in a sense approaches ours; but they are as grains of sand in  the desert, and powerless to make themselves heard or their  influence felt.”

All this, and much more, I heard him say, and to my ears every word came in plain English, yet I seemed to know  that he was not speaking my language, but that it was my  inner consciousness which understood.

“But if I remain here I shall see nothing of Mars,” I suddenly reflected, and the desire to comprehend something  of the nature of the planet became intense.

I looked at Maurice, whom for the time being I had forgotten, and I now perceived what before I had failed to observe—Maurice was not alone.

There, beside him, stood a young woman of superb figure and sweet, gentle countenance. At first I thought she must be a spirit, for I became inwardly conscious of a certain harmonious blending of soul between them; but I soon perceived that she was still in the material body, and I knew  also that already Maurice recognized this harmony; that he  loved her, that she loved him.

Then my desire to be off reached an intensity no longer to be resisted, and I found myself floating over a vast city  made up of the same low buildings previously observed,  with here and there a temple or some public edifice thrown  in.

Presently I was beyond the city and moving over forest and plain; all very beautiful, but in no essential particular  differing from similar scenes on earth.

Soon I came to water—it was red. I looked above me—the clouds, of which there were but few, also had a reddish tinge.

I floated above the water with the same electric rapidity.