Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/137

Rh back with the Eastwind who brought you. He is going away now, and will not come back for a hundred years; the time will fly in this place like a hundred hours, but that is a long time for temptation and sin. Every evening when I leave you I must say 'Come with me,' and I must beckon to you, but stay behind. Do not come with me, for with every step you take your longing will grow stronger. You will reach the hall where grows the Tree of Knowledge; I sleep beneath its fragrant drooping branches. You will bend over me and I must smile, but if you press a kiss upon my lips. Paradise will sink deep down into the earth, and it will be lost to you. The sharp winds of the wilderness will whistle round you, the cold rain will drop from your hair. Sorrow and labour will be your lot."

"I will remain here!" said the Prince.

And the Eastwind kissed him on the mouth and said: "Be strong, then we shall meet again in a hundred years. Farewell! Farewell!" and the Eastwind spread his great wings; they shone like poppies at the harvest time, or the Northern Lights in a cold winter.

"Good-bye! good-bye!" whispered the flowers. Storks and pelicans flew in a line like waving ribbons, conducting him to the boundaries of the Garden.

"Now we begin our dancing!" said the Fairy; "at the end when I dance with you, as the sun goes down you will see me beckon to you and cry, 'Come with me'; but do not come. I have to repeat it every night for a hundred years. Every time you resist, you will grow stronger, and at last you will not even think of following. To-night is the first time. Remember my warning!"

And the Fairy led him into a large hall of white transparent lilies; the yellow stamens in each formed a little golden harp which echoed the sound of strings and flutes. Lovely girls, slender and lissom, dressed in floating gauze which revealed their exquisite limbs, glided in the dance and sang of the joy of living—that they would never die—and that the Garden of Paradise would bloom forever.