This being of spiritual mystery seemed then given up to a silent and religious rapture; and the Missionary, by a slight movement, changing his position, beheld the rapt countenance of the votarist, who had so sublimely assimilated herself to the orb she worshipped, and the God she served. It was Luxima! At the rustling of his robe among the trees, she started, turned round, and her eyes fell upon his figure, while her own was still fixed in the graceful attitude of devotion. Silently gazing, in wonder, upon each other, they stood finely opposed, the noblest specimens of the human species, as it appears in the most opposite regions of the earth; she; like the East, lovely and luxuriant; he, like the West, lofty and commanding: the one, radiant in all the lustre, attractive in all the softness which distinguishes her native regions; the other, towering in all the energy, imposing in all the vigour, which marks his ruder latitudes: she, looking like a creature formed to feel and to submit; he, like a being created to resist and to command: while both appeared as the ministers and representatives of the two most powerful religions of the earth; the one no less enthusiastic in her brilliant errors, than the other confident in his immutable truth.
The Christian Saint and Heathen Priestess remained for some time motionless, in look as in attitude; till Luxima, from a sudden impulse, withdrawing her eyes, the sensation of amazement depicted in her countenance, was rapidly succeeded by a bashful and timid emotion, which rosed her cheek with crimson hues, and threw round her an air of shrinking modesty, which softened the inspired dignity of the offspring of Brahma. But when the Priestess disappeared, the woman stood too much confessed; and a feminine reserve, a lovely timidity, so characteristic of her sex, overwhelmed the Missionary with confusion: he remained, leaning on his crosier, his eyes cast down upon his beads, his lips motionless.
Luxima, who resembled as she stood, the flower which contracts and folds upon itself, even to the influence of the evening air, was the first to interrupt this unexpected and mysterious interview; with a sudden movement she glided by the stranger, but with an air of chill reserve, of majestic distance, as though she feared the unhallowed vestment of infidelity should pollute the consecrated garb of vestal sanctity. He addressed her not, nor by a movement attempted to oppose her intention. He saw her proceed up an avenue of asoca-trees, which received the glittering form of the Priestess into their impervious shade. As she disappeared amidst the deepening gloom, she seemed, to the eye of her sole spectator, like the ray which darts its sunny lustre through the dark vapours gathered, by evening, on the brow of night. Still was his glance directed to the path she had taken; still did the brilliant vision float on his imagination, till the sun, as it deepened the shadows of the trees around him, told how long a reverie, so new and singular in its object, had stolen him from himself. He started, and moved unconsciously towards the bank of the stream, where traces of her idolatrous rites were still visible. Some unctuous clay, mingled with the ottar of the rose, strewed its perfume on the earth; and near it lay a wreath of the buchampaca, the flower of the dawn, whose vestal buds blow with the sun’s first ray, and fade and die beneath his meridian beam, leaving only their odour to survive their transient blooms.