"Leave you!" I said. "I am so happy with you. I never was so happy in my
life."
"But you must go," she rejoined sadly. "Listen! What do you hear?"
"I hear the sound as of a great throbbing of water."
"Ah! you do hear it? Well, I had to go through that door--the door of
the Timeless" (and she shuddered as she pointed to the fourth door)--"to
find you; for if I had not gone, you would never have entered again;
and because I went, the waters around my cottage will rise and rise,
and flow and come, till they build a great firmament of waters over my
dwelling. But as long as I keep my fire burning, they cannot enter.
I have fuel enough for years; and after one year they will sink away
again, and be just as they were before you came. I have not been buried
for a hundred years now." And she smiled and wept.
"Alas! alas!" I cried. "I have brought this evil on the best and kindest
of friends, who has filled my heart with great gifts."
"Do not think of that," she rejoined. "I can bear it very well. You will
come back to me some day, I know. But I beg you, for my sake, my
dear child, to do one thing. In whatever sorrow you may be, however
inconsolable and irremediable it may appear, believe me that the old
woman in the cottage, with the young eyes" (and she smiled), "knows
something, though she must not always tell it, that would quite satisfy
you about it, even in the worst moments of your distress. Now you must
go."
"But how can I go, if the waters are all about, and if the doors all
lead into other regions and other worlds?"
"This is not an island," she replied; "but is joined to the land by a
narrow neck; and for the door, I will lead you myself through the right
one."
She took my hand, and led me through the third door; whereupon I found
myself standing in the deep grassy turf on which I had landed from the
little boat, but upon the opposite side of the cottage. She pointed out
the direction I must take, to find the isthmus and escape the rising
waters.
Then putting her arms around me, she held me to her bosom; and as I
kissed her, I felt as if I were leaving my mother for the first time,
and could not help weeping bitterly. At length she gently pushed me
away, and with the words, "Go, my son, and do something worth doing,"
turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. I
felt very desolate as I went.