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 discordant outcry. Then again a great hush fell.

I had found that for which I had been seeking. This was the East—the real East, mysterious and very ancient-waiting with her immense and measureless patience to catch the awful whisper that shall reveal the secrets of life and birth and death. For she is ever expectant—the East; never weary, never faithless, waiting—waiting always—for the whisper that does not come.

The sadness of the last hour of day—perhaps the saddest thing in all the immeasurable sadness of the East—brooded over the darkening land like some vast, menacing shadow.

The earth, faint with spent energies, drowsed and dreamed amid the soft glamour of the twilight, wrapped about by airs heavy and wearın, velvet-soft and fragrant.

Yet the stillness of that quiet place was like an anxious heart-beat.

And here, alone in this ancient sanctuary, watching the dying day, I pieced together from the fragmentary knowledge, which the research of others had furnished to me, this story of the Downfall of the Gods.

My gropings and searchings among the scattered wreckage of a once mighty civilisation, my sojourn amid the deserted temples of a once great people's