all the world, then? She
puts her hand to her brow, trying to recall something. Slowly it comes
back to her in words, noble words, spoken by one whose face is a
darkness to her. And she listens--

"It is you queens only who can feel the depths of pain, and conceive the
way to its healing."

Ah! that is enough. She has lost her desire to recall more. She would
fain turn back to the former delight and forget the existence of pain.
But the steady voice persists, and will not be quenched.

"Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut
yourselves within your park walls and garden gates; and you are content
to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness, a world
of secrets which you dare not penetrate, and of suffering which you dare
not conceive."

Hazel looks round on the garden. How pleasant it is! Why should she
leave it? Why should she concern herself with what may lie outside this
home-kingdom of hers? She tries again to banish the voice, yet she knows
in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of
that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn
up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood.

Yes, it is useless; there is no escaping the truth the voice tells. So
Hazel yields herself to listen as it goes on.

"I knew you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant
magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look
upon them; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but
to guard.... This you would think a great thing! And do you not think it
a greater thing that all this (and how much more than this) you can do
for fairer flowers than these, flowers that could bless you for having
blessed them, and will love you for having loved them; flowers that have
thoughts like yours, and lives like yours, and which, once saved, you
save for ever? Is this only a little power? Far among the moorlands and
the rocks, far in the darkness of the terrible streets, these feeble
florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems
broken; will you never go down to them, nor set them in order in their
little fragrant beds, nor fence them, in their trembling, from the
fierce wind?"

Engrossed with the voice, Hazel has been walking on, little heeding
whither she goes, when, as its tones die away, a groan startles her. How
terrible its sound; how incongruous, interr