“Poor Omar!” said Walden,—­“The pretty piteousness of him is like the wailing of a lamb led to the slaughter.  Grass is good to graze on, saith lambkin,—­other lambs are fair to frisk with,—­but alas!—­ neither grass nor lambs can last, and therefore as lambkin cannot always be lambkin, it bleats its end in Nothingness!  But, thank God, there is something stronger and wiser in the Universe than lambkin!”

“True!” said Adderley, “But even lambkin has a right to complain of its destiny.”

Walden smiled.

“I think not,”—­he rejoined—­“No created thing has a right to complain of its destiny.  It finds itself Here,—­and the fact that it is Here is a proof that there is a purpose for its existence.  What that purpose is we do not know yet, but we shall know!”

Adderley lifted dubious eyelids.

“You think we shall?”

“Most assuredly!  What does Dante Rosetti say?—­

    ’The day is dark and the night
     To him that would search their heart;
     No lips of cloud that will part
     Nor morning song in the light;
     Only, gazing alone
     To him wild shadows are shown,
     Deep under deep unknown,

    And height above unknown height
     Still we say as we go: 
     “Strange to think by the way
     Whatever there is to know
     That shall we know one day."’”

He recited the lines softly, but with eloquent emphasis.  “You see, those of us who take the trouble to consider the working and progress of events, know well enough that this glorious Creation around us is not a caprice or a farce.  It is designed for a Cause and moves steadily towards that Cause.  There may be—­no doubt there are—­many men who elect to view life from a low, material, or even farcical standpoint—­nevertheless, life in itself is serious and noble.”

Cicely’s dark face lightened as with an illumination while she listened to these words.  Maryllia, who had taken up the roses she had laid in Cicely’s lap, and was now arranging them afresh, looked up suddenly.

“Yet there are many searching truths in the philosophy of Omar Kayyam, Mr. Walden,”—­she said—­“Many sad facts that even our religion can scarcely get over, don’t you think so?”

He met her eyes with a gentle kindliness in his own.

“I think religion, if true and pure, turns all sad facts to sweetness, Miss Vancourt,”—­he said—­“At least, so I have found it.”

The clear conviction of his tone was like the sound of a silver bell calling to prayer.  A silence followed, broken only by the singing of a little bird aloft in the cedar-tree, whose ecstatic pipings aptly expressed the unspoilt joys of innocence and trust.

“One pretty verse of Omar I remember,” then said Cicely, abruptly, fixing her penetrating eyes on Walden,—­“And it really isn’t a bit irreligious.  It is this:—­

    ’The Bird of Life is singing on the bough,
     His two eternal notes of “I and Thou”—­
     O hearken well, for soon the song sings through,
     And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!’”