It murmured only its own personal peace and
accentuated her own personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it
still was, but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the
full terror of Nature's equanimity environing the fierce and tortured
lives of men.
As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the
winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the
hidden home of the Geni of the garden. Yet she remembered acutely all
her first feelings there. Not one was forgotten. They returned to her
like spectres stealing across the sand. They lurked like spectres among
the dense masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes,
not to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more
from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the
sun. But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased. At
last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw
pine needles strewed about her feet. Then she stood still, instinctively
listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and
her own despair.
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