, with trembling fingers, for she was afraid she was dreadfully
rude, and perhaps was hurting it; but she did want, she said to herself,
to see what secret it carried so carefully hidden; and she found its
golden heart. But now, right under her eyes, inside the veil of her
hair, in the sweet twilight of whose blackness she could see it
perfectly, stood a daisy with its red tip opened wide into a carmine
ring, displaying its heart of gold on a platter of silver. She did not
at first recognize it as one of those cones come awake, but a moment's
notice revealed what it was. Who, then, could have been so cruel to the
lovely little creature as to force it open like that, and spread it
heart-bare to the terrible death-lamp? Whoever it was, it must be the
same that had thrown her out there to be burned to death in its fire!
But she had her hair, and could hang her head, and make a small sweet
night of her own about her! She tried to bend the daisy down and away
from the sun, and to make its petals hang about it like her hair, but
she could not. Alas! it was burned and dead already! She did not know
that it could not yield to her gentle force because it was drinking
life, with all the eagerness of life, from what she called the
death-lamp. Oh, how the lamp burned her!

But she went on thinking--she did not know how; and by-and-by began to
reflect that, as there was no roof to the room except that in which the
great fire went rolling about, the little Red-tip must have seen the
lamp a thousand times, and must know it quite well! and it had not
killed it! Nay, thinking about it farther, she began to ask the question
whether this, in which she now saw it, might not be its more perfect
condition. For now not only did the whole seem perfect, as indeed it did
before, but every part showed its own individual perfection as well,
which perfection made it capable of combining with the rest into the
higher perfection of a whole. The flower was a lamp itself! The golden
heart was the light, and the silver border was the alabaster globe
skillfully broken and spread wide to let out the glory. Yes; the radiant
shape was plainly its perfection! If, then, it was the lamp which had
opened it into that shape, the lamp could not be unfriendly to it, but
must be of its own kind, seeing it made it perfect! And again, when she
thought of it, there was clearly no little resemblance between them.
What if the flower, then, was the little great-grandchild