Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/44

36 Here had she learned the sweet language of the birds and flowers, and they, too, had partaken of her joys; but of her sorrows they would not understand, for our joys and our laughter, are they not as the singing of the bird and the dancing of the fly, who weep only when they meet death? In our griefs do we not stand alone, who have in our hearts the fierce desires of love and all the tragedies of despair?

Now, as the young bride turned her slow feet up the mountain, down where her glad feet had turned as a maid, she sat her there by the lake.

The little creatures she was wont to love and understand gathered about her and wondered at her state.

‘She hath returned,’ said the red weasel; ‘see where she sitteth, her head upon her hand. I slew a young bird at her feet, and she spake no word, nor did she care.’

‘It is not she,’ said a linnet, swaying on a safe spray, ‘for had it been she her anger would have slain thee.’