Then I saw in my parable that one day, when the child played in the garden, as he had often played before, he noticed a little green alley, with a pleasant arch of foliage, that he had never seen before, leading to some secluded place.  The child was dimly aware that there were parts of the garden where he was supposed not to go; he had been told he must not go too far from the house, but it was all vague and indistinct in his mind; he had never been shown anything precisely, or told the limits of his wanderings.  So he went in joy, with a sense of a sweet mystery, down the alley, and presently found himself in a still brighter and more beautiful garden, full of fruits growing on the ground and on the trees, which he plucked and ate.  There was a building, like a pavilion, at the end, of two storeys; and while he wandered thither with his hands full of fruits, he suddenly saw his guardian watching him, with a look he had never seen on his face before, from the upper windows of the garden-house.  His first impulse was to run to him, share his joy with him, and ask him why he had not been shown the delicious place; but the fixed and inscrutable look on his guardian’s face, neither smiling nor frowning, the stillness of his attitude, first chilled the child and then dismayed him; he flung the fruits on the ground and shivered, and then ran out of the garden.  In the evening, when he was with his guardian, he found him as kind and tender as ever.  But his guardian said nothing to him about the inner garden of fruits, and the child feared to ask him.

But the next day he felt as though the fruits had given him a new eagerness, a new strength; he hankered after them long, and at last went down the green path again; this time the summer-house seemed empty.  So he ate his fill, and this he did for many days.  Then one day, when he was bending down to pluck a golden fruit, that lay gem-like on the ground among green leaves, he heard a sudden step behind him, and turning, saw his guardian draw swiftly near, with a look of anger on his face; the next instant he was struck down, again and again; lifted from the ground at last, as in a passion of rage, and flung down bleeding on the earth; and then, without a word, his guardian left him; at first he lay and moaned, but then he crawled away, and back to the house.  And there he found the old nurse that tended him, who greeted him with tears and words of comfort, and cared for his hurts.  And he asked her the reason of his hard usage, but she could tell him nothing, only saying that it was the master’s will, and that he sometimes did thus, though she thought he was merciful at heart.