So he
went in joy, with a sense of a sweet mystery, down the alley, and
presently found himself in a still brighter and more beautiful
garden, full of fruits growing on the ground and on the trees,
which he plucked and ate. There was a building, like a pavilion, at
the end, of two storeys; and while he wandered thither with his
hands full of fruits, he suddenly saw his guardian watching him,
with a look he had never seen on his face before, from the upper
windows of the garden-house. His first impulse was to run to him,
share his joy with him, and ask him why he had not been shown the
delicious place; but the fixed and inscrutable look on his
guardian's face, neither smiling nor frowning, the stillness of his
attitude, first chilled the child and then dismayed him; he flung
the fruits on the ground and shivered, and then ran out of the
garden. In the evening, when he was with his guardian, he found him
as kind and tender as ever. But his guardian said nothing to him
about the inner garden of fruits, and the child feared to ask him.
But the next day he felt as though the fruits had given him a new
eagerness, a new strength; he hankered after them long, and at last
went down the green path again; this time the summer-house seemed
empty.
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