Questions Eline asked, and the answers seldom satisfied her, for they never seemed to tell her everything. Every time one of the travelers left the palace to return on his journey there seemed to be a look of appeal in his eyes, an appeal which only Eline seemed to see, and which made her wish to follow them for the very love that shone in the kind faces of these strangers—strangers who told the children stories of things they loved—of wonderful fairy worlds where they were not as in the palace; of worlds where Eline seemed to have traveled many times, long, long ago. One day she asked her father, the king: “Shall I never go out of the palace, never leave the garden of delight and see the world that lies beyond the cloud-mountains, beyond the sunset and the whispering forests?” And the king looked intently at Eline. “These are strange fancies,” he said. “Are you not happy here in the garden?” “Yes, I am happy,” she said, “happier than I can tell. But you have not answered me. Is there not a world beyond? Shall I ever see it?” “Some traveler must have been telling you forbidden tales,” said the king. “These things I have said may not be spoken in my garden.” “No traveler has told me,” said Eline. “I have seen them looking as though they would tell me, but could not, of things beyond the garden, beyond the palace. I have asked them, and they have told me nothing. Yet I have felt that I long to go with them. I have felt that I remember strange places, strange sights, things I know not here, when they speak. Sometimes, even, it seems that I hear a voice like my own repeating a promise—a promise unfulfilled that must be kept. ‘I will return! I will! I will!’ it says. And I hear voices calling in the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, and in the silence of the day, ‘Come back! Come back!’ And the birds say, ‘Come!’ The pines whisper to me strange things, and the laughing water in the brooks says ‘Come!’ What does it mean?” “I cannot tell you here,” said the king. “But why do you wish to leave the palace? You are yet young and there are many, many years of happiness before you. You may stay in the palace where all things are good, and put these things out of mind. There is another world, but not for you—yet!” Eline was troubled, or would have been had such a thing been possible in the palace of the king. “May I ever see that land? May I ever leave the palace?” “The children of the king are free to come and go,” he said. “I may not keep them if they will not stay; for I know that they will come again.” II