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That was the paradox, and she felt herself pause to look at it as she saw it for the first time.—‘If we never found it, if we felt life only as loss and change, we could not love life as we do. We love it because we find love. In spite of everything.’

He did not move. He did not speak. She knew that he was standing there looking at her and she dropped her hand and raised her eyes to his.

From the first she had seen something endearing and ingenuous in his ravaged face, and it was now that his innocent gaze brought her her deepest vision of him. She saw him as a little boy, as young, nearly, as Robin, who had been frightened, and who had come to his mother with a question. It was all there in his face as he said slowly: ‘But in that case, if it is given, there would be a Giver. There would be a Giver—who cared to give. I wonder if you are right. I often wonder about it all. Do you really think there may be a meaning in it for us?—“And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.”—Do you really think that possible?’

It was the question of the little boy longing for comfort; it was the question of myth and legend. But it was only in the terms of myth and legend that the deepest questions could be asked or answered.—‘We are all nothing more than children,’ thought