The Gardener 83

She dwelt on the hillside by the edge of a maize-field, near thespring that flows in laughing rills through the solemn shadows ofancient trees. The women came there to fill their jars, andtravellers would sit there to rest and talk. She worked anddreamed daily to the tune of the bubbling stream.

One evening the stranger came down from the cloud-hidden peak; hislocks were tangled like drowsy snakes. We asked in wonder, "Whoare you?" He answered not but sat by the garrulous stream andsilently gazed at the hut where she dwelt. Our hearts quaked infear and we came back home when it was night.

Next morning when the women came to fetch water at the spring bythe deodar trees, they found the doors open in her hut, but hervoice was gone and where was her smiling face? The empty jar layon the floor and her lamp had burnt itself out in the corner. Noone knew where she had fled to before it was morning--and thestranger had gone.

In the month of May the sun grew strong and the snow melted, andwe sat by the spring and wept. We wondered in our mind, "Is therea spring in the land where she has gone and where she can fill hervessel in these hot thirsty days?" And we asked each other indismay, "Is there a land beyond these hills where we live?"

It was a summer night; the breeze blew from the south; and I satin her deserted room where the lamp stood still unlit. Whensuddenly from before my eyes the hills vanished like curtainsdrawn aside. "Ah, it is she who comes. How are you, my child? Areyou happy? But where can you shelter under this open sky? And,alas, our spring is not here to allay your thirst."

"Here is the same sky," she said, "only free from the fencinghills,--this is the same stream grown into a river,--the sameearth widened into a plain." "Everything is here," I sighed, "onlywe are not." She smiled sadly and said, "You are in my heart." Iwoke up and heard the babbling of the stream and the rustling ofthe deodars at night.