soft peacock flames, a host of irised prismatic gleamings,
an ordered chaos of rainbows.

Great and small, interlacing and shifting, they ringed
the valley with an incredible glory--as if some god of
light itself had touched the eternal rocks and bidden radiant
souls stand forth.

Through the darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living
light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never
fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of
ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa.
For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then
arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands;
began to creep downward toward the eastern horizon where
a nebulous, pulsing splendor arose to meet it.

And as we watched I heard a gasp from Drake. And it
was echoed by my own.

For the six beams were swaying, moving with ever
swifter motion from side to side in ever-widening sweep,
as though the hidden orb from which they sprang were
swaying like a pendulum.

Faster and faster the six high-flung beams swayed--and
then broke--broke as though a gigantic, unseen hand had
reached up and snapped them!

An instant the severed ends ribboned aimlessly, then