protected me.

And now I understand.

He left the cave and climbed, sure-footed, to a higher plateau. Here there was no snow. Only wind-swept rock and meager soil. He walked until he came to his destination.

It was another hut; this one of sod and rock to stand against the wind and the cold. A man sat in the doorway, swathed in furs. His skin was dark from the weather, but it was impossible to call him either old or young.

Lee did not even dwell on these points. He only knew—from his new perception, from the new mysticism he had earned with his suffering—that the hut and the man would be there; that no chance had brought him; that all had been arranged as surely as sunrise.

He stood before the man and raised his eyes. "The mountains are high."

"The mountains are always high. No man ever reaches the summit of his mountain."

"I know that now."

"Nor even a cave halfway up the mountain's side."

"That I know too. I also know—"

"That the man with the golden eyes—?"

"Is myself. He was there within me back in my room half a world away, not in a cave in the Himalayas."

"The man with the golden eyes, my son, is every man—the symbol of perfection every man carries in his heart. It is the seeking after this perfection that is life: The man with the golden eyes is the image of what every man has the power to be."

"I know these things now, but tell me. Why was it given to me to see the image so clearly?"

"Each man who reaches the depths is given a choice. On one hand is death; on the other, the long climb back."

"But there was more in my case. I was given help. I was guided."

"Your footsteps may have been directed but you had to make the climb yourself. You could always have given up and died along the way."

"But why was I guided?"

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