Again she smiled as she recognized the voice. A feeling of intense
happiness and content came to her and she--awoke. More than ever it
seemed as if that other were the real life, and this a heavy dream.
[Illustration]
V
The twilight glow still lingered in the west and the evening breeze
called her to thoughts of home.
But she had learned wisdom, and when they asked her where she had been,
Eline said she had fallen asleep in the sunshine on a rock by the great
river. Which was true.
Of her dream she said nothing to any except to the old man who alone
seemed to understand her a little. He did not laugh, but looked with
thoughtful eyes intent, into the distance, away to the starlit sky, and
it seemed to her that he also was trying to remember a forgotten dream
of life. And seeing this she put her hand in his trustingly, and they
two knew well each other's thoughts though never a word was spoken.
It seemed to the old man that the child was leading him along a familiar
road to a home forgotten--after many weary days of wandering.
"There are some things the heart can say that words can never tell," he
said to himself when she was gone. "I think we understand one another."
As time passed by Eline came to know more and more of that other life
and she longed to tell these things to the people who struggled and
surged in hot strife to win the things of the world they knew, never
thinking that there was a happier, purer, brighter world. Some thought
they knew of such a one; but all except a few made it seem like the one
in which they lived--only they made it a little more bright by day, a
little more dark by night, and with a little more success in the strife
for the things that change and pass away. These she would tell of the
nobler life she knew, but they listened not at all.
In due time Eline was sent to school to learn. But her teachers found
little that she did not quickly understand. For one thing she remembered
now plainly, how in the garden of delight everything that was done was
well done--were it the telling of a story or the singing of a song or the
watering of the flowers that grew in that fair land. All was done with a
wonderful thoroughness, and Eline now felt that she must do all things
in that way or leave them quite alone. But often they would teach Eline
things about which she seemed to care little and to understand as one in
a dream. Then they would call her attention to the work only to find
that she was learning to understand a great deal more than they
themselves could tell. It was so with numbers. When they asked her what
the numbers were by name, she not only named them all but told them why
they were so named and what each meant. And so with music. With every
chord she seemed to see harmonies of color, like beautiful pictures too
glorious to paint. And when she said that life itself to her was music,
Eline's teachers did not understand.