reme.

"Names," murmured the lazy one dreamily, "are things. When a thing is
'named true' its name and itself become inseparable and identical. That
is why all magic is wrought by names. It becomes simply a matter of
knowing the right ones."

"Is that a very new idea, or a very old one?"

"All ideas are ageless, so it must be both."

"I wonder how they named things in the very, very first?" mused Desire.
"Did they just sit in the sun, as we are sitting, and think and think,
until suddenly--they knew?"

"Very likely. There is a legend that, in the beginning, everything was
named true--fire, water, earth, air--so that the souls of everything
knew their names and were ruled by those who could speak them. But, as
the race grew less simple and more corrupt, the true names were
obscured and then lost altogether. Only once or twice in all the ages
has come some master who has known their secret--such, perhaps, as He
who could speak peace to the wind and walk upon the sea and change the
water into wine."

Desire nodded. "Yes," she said. "It feels like that--as if one had
forgotten. Sometimes when I have been in the woods alone or drifting
far out on the water, where there was no sound but its own voice, it
has seemed as if I had only to think--hard--hard--in order to remember!
Only one never does."

"But one may--there is always the chance. I fancied I was near it
once--in a shell hole. The stars were big and close and the earth
seemed light and ready to float away. I almost had it then--my lips
were just moving upon some mighty word--but someone came. They found me
and carried me in ... I say, the sun is climbing up, let's follow it."

Hand in hand they followed the line of the sinking sun up the slippery
slope. They both knew where they were going, for every evening of their
stay they had wandered there to sit awhile in the little deserted
Indian burying-ground which lay, white fenced and peaceful, facing the
flaming west. When they had found it first it had seemed to give the
last touch of beauty to that beautiful place.

"It is so different," said Desire, searching carefully, as was her way,
for the proper word. "It is so--so beautifully dead. It ought to be
like that," she went on thoughtfully. "I never realized before why our
cemeteries are so sad--it is because we will not let them really
die--we dress them up with flowers--a kind of ghastly life in death.
But this--"

They looked around them at the little w