“Give up this!” said Life. “When the thorns have pierced me, who will suck the poison out? When my head throbs, who will lay his tiny hands upon it and still the beating? In the cold and the dark, who will warm my freezing heart?” And Love cried out, “Better let me die! Without Joy I can live; without this I cannot. Let me rather die, not lose it!” And the wise old woman answered, “O fools and blind! What you once had is that which you have now! When Love and Life first meet, a radiant thing is born, without a shade. When the roads begin to roughen, when the shades begin to darken, when the days are hard, and the nights cold and long--then it begins to change. Love and Life WILL not see it, WILL not know it--till one day they start up suddenly, crying, ‘O God! O God! we have lost it! Where is it?’ They do not understand that they could not carry the laughing thing unchanged into the desert, and the frost, and the snow. They do not know that what walks beside them still is the Joy grown older. The grave, sweet, tender thing--warm in the coldest snows, brave in the dreariest deserts--its name is Sympathy; it is the Perfect Love.” South Africa. II. THE HUNTER. In certain valleys there was a hunter. Day by day he went to hunt for wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores of a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of the birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a reflection. He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a burning desire came over him to see once again that reflection in the water, and all day he watched and waited; but night came and it had not returned. Then he went home with his empty bag, moody and silent. His comrades came questioning about him to know the reason, but he answered them nothing; he sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came to him, and to him he spoke. “I have seen today,” he said, “that which I never saw before--a vast white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting blue. And now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It was but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire nothing more on earth than to hold her.” His friend laughed. “It was but a beam playing on the water, or the shadow of your own head. Tomorrow you will forget her,” he said. But tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow the hunter walked alone. He sought in the forest and in the woods, by the lakes and among the rushes, but he could not find her. He shot no more wild fowl; what were they to him? “What ails him?” said his comrades. “He is mad,” said one. “No; but he is worse,” said another; “he would see that which none of us have seen, and make himself a wonder.” “Come, let us forswear his company,” said all. So the hunter walked alone. One night, as he wandered in the shade, very heartsore and weeping, an old man stood before him, grander and taller than the sons of men.