“You don’t seem to know much about magic,” said Maia pityingly: “the first principle of magic is that time spent in other worlds doesn’t count in your own home. No, I see you don’t understand. In your home it’s still the same time as it was when you dived into the well in the cave.”
“But that’s hours ago,” said Bernard; and she answered:
“I know. But your time is not like our time at all.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I can’t explain,” said the Princess. “You can’t compare them any more than you can compare a starlight and a starfish. They’re quite, quite different. But the really important thing is that your Mother won’t be anxious. So now why not enjoy yourselves?”
And all this time the other Princess had been holding up the jar which was the source of all the rivers in all the world.
“Won’t she be very tired?” asked Reuben.
“Yes, but suppose all the rivers dried up—and she had to know how people were suffering—that would be something much harder to bear than tiredness. Look in the pool and see what she is doing for the world.”
They looked, and it was like a colored cinematograph; and the pictures melted into one another like the old dissolving views that children used to love so before cinematographs were thought of.
They saw the Red Indians building their wigwams by the great rivers—and the beavers building their dams across the little rivers; they saw brown men setting their fish traps by the Nile, and brown girls sending out little golden-lighted love-ships on the Ganges. They saw the stormy splendor of the St. Lawrence, and the Medway’s pastoral peace. Little streams dappled with sunlight and the shadow of green leaves, and the dark and secret torrents that tear through the underworld in caverns and hidden places. They saw women washing clothes in the Seine, and boys sailing boats on the Serpentine. Naked savages dancing in masks beside tropical streams overshadowed by strange trees and flowers that we do not know—and men in flannels and girls in pink and blue, punting in the backwaters of the Thames. They saw Niagara and the Zambesi Falls; and all the time the surface of the pool was smooth as a mirror and the arched stream that was the source of all they saw poured ceaselessly over their heads and fell splashing softly into its little marble channel.