Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/264

 Here my experience with the Doctor was repeated, but with a difference.

With wonderful distinctness I could discern the spiritual prototype of my friend, but there, mingled with it so  strangely that I was unable to detect where one began and  the other ended, was a complete duplication of every portion of the spiritual Maurice. I could see them separately, yet were they blended incomprehensibly. One was Maurice but the other was a woman. I could see her face with perfect plainess [sic]. More than that, I recognized her. It was the woman whom I had seen standing beside Maurice on  Mars.

Now Mirrikh waved his hand and all this vanished. I was looking on his face again.

“You believe now?”

“I cannot do otherwise—I must believe.”

“It is well that you do, for it is written that you must write, that those who will may read. The time is close at hand when a flood of spiritual light is to be poured upon  the earth, arousing the Eastern adepts from their selfish  lethargy; light before which the agnosticism of the West  will melt away like snow before an April sun. Yours is the mission, friend Wylde, to in some slight degree aid in the  coming of the light. It has already begun to shine, but it must be made to shine brighter and brighter still, until  darkness is wholly banished, and men, as in the days of  old, know Nature’s secrets as the dwellers beyond the veil  know them; know each other, not as they would seem to be,  but as they are.”

“God grant that I may be faithful to the trust!” I murmured.

“Have no fear. Your work is but as the work of one of the minutest fibres in the body whose interiors you have  just seen. Help will be given you when help is needed. In the words of Jesus the Christ, I say unto you: “Watch and  pray! The time is close at hand.”

He ceased to speak and walked with firm tread toward the rift—that awful rift through which the water went rushing with its sullen roar.

To my continued amazement I saw that the break offered no obstacle to his progress. He seemed to float rather than walk across it. In an instant I beheld him on the other side. Silently, and with a sense of profound confidence in