plained humbly. "Not of bears
or anything in the deep woods. But caterpillars crawl so!"

"However, it didn't make any difference where you were, because while we
were asleep it was just as it is while we are awake--there is a fine
thread that goes from me to you. There might be processions of people
between us, chariots and horses and marching armies, but they couldn't
break the thread."

"And what do we do all day?"

"Talk. Think. I think to you and you think back to me."

"But we must work. If we don't, you'll get tired of me." She spoke out
of sad knowledge.

"Why, playmate!"

The reproach in his voice recalled her, and she was ashamed to find her
belief less warm than his.

"Well," he conceded, "maybe we work. I go on grafting and sowing seeds
and sending things to market, and you sit on a stone and sing."

"Shall I sing to you now?"

"No, playmate. It makes me sad."

"I could sing happy songs."

"That wouldn't make any difference. When you sing, it wakens something
in me, some discontent, some longing bigger than I am, and that's not
pleasure. It is pain."

"Are you afraid of pain?"

He waited a long time. Then he asked her,--

"Have you ever known pain?"

"Yes. I thought my mind was going."

"But not pain of your body?"

"Oh, no, not that."

"The pain of the body is something to be afraid of. If we have it once,
we cringe when we see it coming. But your singing--can I tell you what
it wakens in me? No, for I don't know. Pain, the premonition of pain.
Something I must escape."

"Yet I was to sit by and sing to you while you were at work."

"Yes, but that would be when we were quite content." It was the first
wistful hint that things were lacking to him. He could not be contented;
yet, against reason, his manner told a different, braver story.

"You said," she began, "if armies came between us, they could not break
the little thread. Suppose I go away?"

"That wouldn't break it. Don't you suppose my thought can run to London
or Rome? It isn't worth much if it can't."

"Suppose I"--she stopped, appalled at herself for the thought, but
jealously anxious to be told.

"Suppose you marry the prince? That would be dreadful, because you don't
love him. But it wouldn't break the thread. It would muffle it, I guess.
We couldn't think back and forth on it. But it would be there."

Immediately it seemed to her that she had something even more precious
than she had guessed, something not to be