possessed of high learning. So I pitied him, and my fear of him turned into compassion for him. But who am I to feel compassion or pity? And who knows the boundaries that separate madness from reason? In his own reckoning he is the only sane one and I am the madman. He sees in me one of his most intimate friends, and I flee from him — would not my conduct, in his eyes, be counted madness?

This thought restored my tranquillity and kindled the fire of my desire to know the man through and through; so I went with him into the tower and sat on a rock near him while he looked at me, smiling, musing.

After a deep silence he turned to me and said:

— You have become like the rest of people. You call me mad, no doubt! And you fear me as they fear me.

I answered him with a smile — knowing that this is the most effective way with madmen:

— I do not fear you; otherwise I would not have come in with you.

And I stood up suddenly, and began watching him without letting him feel it, lest he think I dreaded him and his madness do me harm. Then he gazed long at the sea and said:

— Here, O Adonai, Quds cast herself in and died, while I watched her from close by... A curse on me for a coward... with no gallantry in him...

I found nothing better than to shake my head, grieving with him, like one who understood who Quds was and why she had flung herself into the deep — though in truth I was "like a deaf man at the wedding procession."

— And here you found me and consoled me and light-ened my pains! But no blame falls on you if you have forgotten, for your soul has not yet slipped free of the bonds of the body so as to remember the past. Listen, then, and I will recount to you its painful memories!

He was silent a moment, then said:

— Do you remember, my friend, the day we were novices in the secret circle of Pythagoras? Do you not grasp what I say?

I nodded my head in assent, and he returned to his silence; then he stared far off at the horizon like one in a dream, a strange shiver came over him, and he addressed me, saying:

— We were three together, thousands of years ago — you and she and I — playing together and rejoicing on this beautiful shore! Nature has not changed much, save that man has stripped her of her trees; but this sea is still a sea! And this shore a shore! Hundreds of years have passed since the days when the Phoenician Arabs — and I say Arabs, because they are sons of this Arabian peninsula to which we are all bound by ties of stock and lineage, not as they try to picture them to us — ... hundreds of years have passed by our reckoning, we being bound in the bonds of the body; yet they are moments in our free, unfettered spiritual life.

We played together from childhood, and my father was a bosom friend of her father's; and you were always with us, smoothing our affairs, until we grew up and a firm love was founded between us.

I loved her and she loved me — the leaping gazelle of Lebanon; in the meadows and the pastures, in the hollows and on the banks of the brooks we would meet.

She is mine and I am hers, my beloved bounding among the forests!

Who is this who comes from afar, dancing among the flowers of the fields and gardens?

Who is this beauty among the girls, this queen among the virgins?

Her eyes shoot arrows, and her heart blazes with love and passion. She is Quds!

My beloved, O Adonai! My splendid gazelle in the thickets of Lebanon!

Ah, Adonai, do you not remember her? You loved her as I did, but you sacrificed your love when you learned that she could not return it, so bound was she to me; so you were the friend, you were the affectionate one, and of your love you contented yourself with her happiness and mine! For this our two hearts adored you, and in you we knew the meaning of brotherhood and of pure love; and for this you see me now rejoicing at your return, awaiting your coming to me — for the bonds of true friendship are not sundered by the passing of generations! It is eternal!

Then I began to feel something hidden within me, yearning toward a past of which I had no acquaintance, longing to clasp the hand of the madman of the mountain as an old friend; and I almost grasped the secret of that drawing power which had dragged me to my mad deed of meeting him in that solitary place! I do not know — only that some hidden sense had awakened within me, as though it wished to slip free of its bonds and could not! So I said to him:

— But I do not understand what you are saying! I was your friend and Quds's friend thousands of years ago — when I have not yet passed my thirtieth spring? Nor do I recall ever seeing you before, or hearing of Quds except in the books of history.

He answered me, smiling:

— No wonder in what you say! Your soul is bound to your body, and so long as it is upon this earth it cannot grasp what I grasp, nor can you remember your past life of thousands of years ago here upon the earth.

— But... how did you come to grasp it, when you are bound like me?

— Something befell me that set me loose from my bonds, and I suddenly beheld the greatness of the far-off, near-at-hand past, like one looking down upon a deep valley from a towering height! Do you not remember what our master Pythagoras taught us when we left this land together in search of wisdom — that I might return afterward of wide renown, a chief among my people, and so be worthy of Quds, as her father made it a condition upon me, out of love for us and to raise our station? Do you not remember how we reached the sage's stronghold, and he tried us with many harsh trials, to test our steadfastness and our fitness to receive wisdom, and we fasted forty days, eating nothing but dry bread and drinking nothing but warm water? Then how we were gathered together in a dark room, and two of his followers led us through a narrow, dark passage, and we passed through the midst of burning fire, terrifying, frightful sounds troubling our progress, until we came to a locked door with two rings in it; and hardly had we grasped them when the door gave way beneath us and we hung over