Instead of going to the Abbey, Bhavananda retired into the depths of the wood. There were ruins of a very old building in the woods. Shrubs had grown profusely on the ruins and the place had become the abode of numberless snakes. One part of the ruins was clearer and less worn than the rest, and Bhavananda sat upon this spot and began to think.
The night was very dark. The wood too was very large and lonely, very dense and, for the thickly placed trees and shrubs, impenetrable even by wild beasts. It was vast, lonely, dark, impenetrable and silent. The only sounds in it were the occasional roar of the tiger or the grim yell of a beast of prey crying for hunger or in fear or rage. At times there was the sound of the beating of a big bird's wings and at other times of the footsteps of the beasts, pursuing and the pursued, preying and preyed upon. Seated on the ruined building in that lonely darkness was Bhavananda musing alone. The world did not then exist for him or existed only as the home of fear. He was thinking with his hand on his forehead;—he did not move or breathe for fear and was immersed in deep thought. He was saying to himself: " What is to be, must be. My only regret is that I should have been swept away by a torrent of passion like the petty elephant before
