Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/90

 improvising; others regularly, and with great as well as, so far as they personally were concerned, highly profitable skill, so that by mutually lessening the dividing distance, not a little contact, even, took place between the groups.

For which reason I am really unable to say whether I have or have not, by the help of the favouring fate which held me back from the nightly paths of the goddess-dancer with her swaying necklace of human skulls, actually won so very much.

After this profound reflection, the pilgrim Kamanita became silent, and turned his eyes, lost in thought, on the full moon, which rose large and glowing into the heavens directly over the distant forest—the haunt of the robbers—and flooded with a stream of light the open hall of the potter, where it seemed to transform the yellow mantle of the Master into pure gold, like to the raiment of some godlike image.

The Lord Buddha—on whom the pilgrim, attracted by the splendour, but without having the smallest inkling of the identity of him whom he beheld, involuntarily turned his gaze—indicated his sympathy by a measured inclination of the head, and said—

"Still I but see thee, pilgrim, turning thy steps rather towards home than homelessness, although the path to the latter had of a truth opened itself to thee with sufficient plainness."

"Even so, O Reverend One! My dim eyes failed to see the path to freedom, and I took my way, as thou sayest, to the home."

The pilgrim sighed deeply, and by and by, in a fresh, clear voice, resumed the record of his experiences.