must pass through strange drear places--there,
where all is cold, and the snow lies thick, he took their freezing hands
and held them against his beating little heart, and warmed them--and
softly he drew them on and on.

And when they came beyond, into the land of sunshine and flowers,
strangely the great eyes lit up, and dimples broke out upon the face.
Brightly laughing, it ran over the soft grass; gathered honey from the
hollow tree; and brought it them on the palm of its hand; carried them
water in the leaves of the lily, and gathered flowers and wreathed them
round their heads, softly laughing all the while. He touched them as
their Joy had touched them, but his fingers clung more tenderly.

So they wandered on, through the dark lands and the light, always with
that little brave smiling one between them. Sometimes they remembered
that first radiant Joy, and whispered to themselves, "Oh! could we but
find him also!"

At last they came to where Reflection sits; that strange old woman who
has always one elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand, and who
steals light out of the past to shed it on the future.

And Life and Love cried out, "O wise one! tell us: when first we met, a
lovely radiant thing belonged to us--gladness without a tear, sunshine
without a shade. Oh! how did we sin that we lost it? Where shall we go
that we may find it?"

And she, the wise old woman, answered, "To have it back, will you give
up that which walks beside you now?"

And in agony Love and Life cried, "No!"

"Give up this!" said Life. "When the thorns have pierced me, who will
suck the poison out? When my head throbs, who will lay his tiny hands
upon it and still the beating? In the cold and the dark, who will warm
my freezing heart?"

And Love cried out, "Better let me die! Without Joy I can live; without
this I cannot. Let me rather die, not lose it!"

And the wise old woman answered, "O fools and blind! What you once had
is that which you have now! When Love and Life first meet, a radiant
thing is born, without a shade. When the roads begin to roughen, when
the shades begin to darken, when the days are hard, and the nights cold
and long--then it begins to change. Love and Life WILL not see it, WILL
not know it--till one day they start up suddenly, crying, 'O God! O God!
we have lost it! Where is it?' They do not understand that they could
not carry the laughing thing unchanged into the desert, and the frost,
and the snow.