Four-square they stand, those towers, and fourfold the gates
that open to the denizens of other earths. But of these I have no
knowledge beyond the fact that it is so in my visions.
I sat upon the borders of the Road, my eyes fixed in hope upon the
Gates, though well I knew that the hope would never be fulfilled, and
watched the dead go by.
They were many that night. Some plague was working in the East and
unchaining thousands. The folk that it loosed were strange to me who in
this particular life have seldom left England, and I studied them with
curiosity; high-featured, dark-hued people with a patient air. The
knowledge which I have told me that one and all they were very ancient
souls who often and often had walked this Road before, and therefore,
although as yet they did not know it, were well accustomed to the
journey. No, I am wrong, for here and there an individual did know.
Indeed one deep-eyed, wistful little woman, who carried a baby in her
arms, stopped for a moment and spoke to me.
"The others cannot see you as I do," she said. "Priest of the Queen of
queens, I know you well; hand in hand we climbed by the seven stairways
to the altars of the moon."
"Who is the Queen of queens?" I asked.
"Have you forgotten her of the hundred names whose veils we lifted one
by one; her whose breast was beauty and whose eyes were truth? In a day
to come you will remember. Farewell till we walk this Road no more."
"Stay--when did we meet?"
"When our souls were young," she answered, and faded from my ken like a
shadow from the sea.
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