Garden
something to himself as they shook hands; she heard the rich, unknown words that sounded as the echo of far music. Afterwards he had told her what those words signified:
"How say ye that I was lost? I wandered among roses.
Can he go astray that enters the rose garden?
The Lover in the house of the Beloved is not forlorn.
I wandered among roses. How say ye that I was lost?"
His voice, murmuring the strange words, had persuaded her, and now she had the rapture of the perfect knowledge. She had looked out into the silvery uncertain night in order that she might experience the sense that for her these things no longer existed. She was not any more a part of the garden, or of the lake, or of the wood, or of the life that she had led hitherto. Another line that he had quoted came to her:
"The kingdom of I and We forsake and your home in annihilation make."
It had seemed at first almost nonsense—if it had been possible for him to talk nonsense; but now she was filled and thrilled with the meaning of it. Herself was annihilated; at his bidding she had destroyed all her old feelings and emotions, her likes and dislikes, all the inherited loves and hates that her father and mother had given her; the old life had been thrown utterly away.
It grew light, and when the dawn burned she fell asleep, murmuring:
"How say ye that I was lost?"
