Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/353

Rh not here. Who can read the Cause of an act is half-way to Freedom! "Back to the path" says the Blow. The hills are not for thee. Thou canst not choose Freedom and go in Bondage to the delight of life.'

'If we had never met that thrice-cursed Russian!'

'Our Lord Himself cannot make the Wheel swing backward. And for my merit that I had acquired I gain yet another sign.' He put his hand in his bosom, and drew forth the Wheel of Life. 'Look! I considered this after I had meditated. There remains untorn by the idolater no more than the breadth of my finger-nail.'

'I see.'

'So much, then, is the span of my life in this body. I have served the Wheel all my days. Now the Wheel serves me. But for the merit I have acquired in guiding thee upon the Way, there would have been added to me yet another life ere I had found my River. Is it plain, chela?'

Kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. From left to right diagonally the rent ran—from the Eleventh House where desire gives birth to the child (as it is drawn by Buddhists)—across the human and animal worlds, to the Fifth House—the empty house of the senses. The logic was unanswerable.

'Before our Lord won Enlightenment,' the lama folded all away with reverence, 'He was tempted. I too have been tempted, but it is finished. The Arrow fell in the Plains—not in the Hills. Therefore, what do we here?'

'Shall we at least wait for the hakim?'

'I know how long I live in this body. What can a hakim do?'

'But thou art all sick and shaken. Thou canst not walk.'

'How can I be sick if I see Freedom?' He rose unsteadily to his feet.