WE had finished our work and went out into the garden, the Mirza and I. The long rainless summer was over. The last few days there had been clouds on the mountains: this morning there had been a strange smell of freshness in the air—and now the first drops were falling. The whole garden seemed to wake up and to be busy drinking. We stood bare-headed in the rain for the pleasure of being wet.

“And so,” I said, “the book was sent to Hadijeh as we see it now. Do you suppose she understood it?”

As usual, the answer was in a parable. “You under­stand where this rain comes from, and how the sun sucked up the water from the sea and how the wind brought it. That flower does not understand; but the rain is its life.”

I asked him if he could explain the meaning of the book, for I found it very difficult.

“I told you,” he said, “that our thoughts were not your thoughts. But I will try and explain it as my master, who is dead, would have explained it.

“I have been a schoolmaster, and have taught boys to write and count. I have a big black board, and I write on it letters and numbers. And the boys learn them. And to make them learn I give them rewards and punishments. And having learnt the letters they put them together in words, and the words into sentences; and so, from the letters, they arrive at reason. And so, having learnt to read, they go their ways into the world.

“I say, I give them rewards and punishments that they may learn; but the rewards and punishments are not learning, but the means whereby they are brought to learn. And when they grow up they use the knowledge they have learnt. Some are clerks and writers and make money; others read in the mosques and get reputation; others ponder on the word of the Most Merciful and get Truth. And the money and the fame are not learning but the wages of it.

“And even so with counting. For my boys are taught to count and reckon, and, having learned, they go their ways into the world, and some go into banks and shops, or into the government offices; and so their learning receives its wages; but the wages are not learning, but, at most, a sign that the learning is useful to man, as good fruit is a sign of a good tree. And some go out and think, and from 2 and 3 and 4 they learn to know the One in Many; and this is learning.

“Now the world is Allah's school, and Allah has many schoolmasters; and they have many names; and the name of one is Love.

“And lovers are his scholars. And he holds out to them his rewards and his punishments; the pleasure of meeting and the pain of parting; but the rewards and punishments are not the learning.

“And my master said that those whom the world calls lovers are often but love's hirelings and not his scholars. They have received his wage: the joy of beauty, the delight of home and riches and the blessing of children. Yet they have not learnt his lesson. But if you can show me one that loves and continues to love without hope of reward or the joy of meeting; one, in fine, who does his work and asks no wages, and learns his lesson and demands no reward; then, indeed, you have found a true scholar of love who has truly learnt the lesson which love was sent on earth to teach.”

“And what,” I said, “is the lesson?”

The Mirza repeated the verse: “Unless thy knowledge makes thee other than thou wert, that knowledge is worse than ignorance.” And then he added: “Unless my pupils leave me other than they were, my teaching is in vain. And when love the schoolmaster dismisses his pupils how many go from his school even as they came! For they came fond of pleasure, fond of riches, fond of themselves; and even as they came they left him. But he that is truly love's scholar has learnt something else, even as the figures on my black board are other than the Truth of God written in flame on the vault of heaven.

“For if the pleasure of love be love, then is love greatest where there is most pleasure. But we know that this is not so, for love is great where pleasure is not; as the poet says, ‘where for the joy of meeting there is the pain of parting and for the fulness of life, emptiness and desolation.’ Is it not written in your holy Book that his love is greatest who gives his life for his friend?

“They that dwell in the prison of ‘I and you’ can never know the Truth. And love lures men from their prison. For they that love have no longer pleasure in themselves but in some one else. And many who have escaped for a moment out of prison are, as it were, dazzled by the light and overcome by the freshness of day, and after a time they return to their prison, to lie in the straw and feed on prison fare. But others, once freed, are free for ever. And to them it is even as it was to those of whom it is written in your book, that they met a stranger in the road and spoke with him, and, hearing his words, they entreated him to stay with them; and of a sudden they were aware that he was no stranger, but their Master and Lord.

“For the garden of Truth has many gates; but the gate is not the garden.”