How beautiful!  A girl in a long, white robe, with a sweet, dark-eyed face, which she knows to be her own.  She is leaning slightly forward, and the eyes—­so often heavy and weary—­are brimming with happiness, the lips parted in a smile.  Her hair, with its pretty, sunny ripples, is unbound, and the wind blows it slightly back from her shoulders.  And, most wonderful and striking of all, a circlet of pure gold rests upon the shapely head, and a second circlet is clasped round the waist.  Then she is a queen?  No doubt of it.  And then comes, to the joy of admiration of all she has seen, the added joy of certainty that all is her own.  This is a queen’s garden, and she is the happy queen!

More and more dawns gradually upon her.  There are those near at hand dear to her, to whom she is also dear, whose queen she is.  Oh the joy of it all!  She clasps her hands in ecstasy, and the pretty reflection in the pool is more than ever lovely, only she has forgotten it now.

A serious thought must have come into Hazel’s mind, for suddenly a different expression appears in her eyes; a look of perplexity and shade of sorrow.  The consciousness in her new life is growing, and, alas! it is not unmixed with pain.  This garden is not all the world, then?  She puts her hand to her brow, trying to recall something.  Slowly it comes back to her in words, noble words, spoken by one whose face is a darkness to her.  And she listens—­

“It is you queens only who can feel the depths of pain, and conceive the way to its healing.”

Ah! that is enough.  She has lost her desire to recall more.  She would fain turn back to the former delight and forget the existence of pain.  But the steady voice persists, and will not be quenched.

“Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden gates; and you are content to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness, a world of secrets which you dare not penetrate, and of suffering which you dare not conceive.”

Hazel looks round on the garden.  How pleasant it is!  Why should she leave it?  Why should she concern herself with what may lie outside this home-kingdom of hers?  She tries again to banish the voice, yet she knows in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood.

Yes, it is useless; there is no escaping the truth the voice tells.  So Hazel yields herself to listen as it goes on.