"Not very far, my Children," said Light. "Over there to the Land of the Silence of Things."
"No, no," said Tyltyl. "I won't have you go...."
But Light quieted them with a motherly gesture and said words to them which they never forgot. Long after, when they were a grandfather and grandmother in their turn, Tyltyl and Mytyl still remembered them and used to repeat them to their grandchildren.
Here are Light's touching words:
"Listen, Tyltyl. Do not forget, child, that everything that you see in this world has neither beginning nor end. If you keep this thought in your heart and let it grow up with you, you will always, in all circumstances, know what to say, what to do and what to hope for."
And, when our two friends began to sob, she added, lovingly:
"Do not cry, my dear little ones.... I have not a voice like Water; I have only my brightness, which Man does not understand.... But I watch over him to the end of his days.... Never forget that I am speaking to you in every spreading moonbeam, in every twinkling star, in every dawn that rises, in every lamp that is lit, in every good and bright thought of your soul...."
At that moment, the grandfather's clock in the cottage struck eight o'clock. Light stopped for a moment and then, in a voice that grew suddenly fainter, whispered:
"Good-bye!... Good-bye!... The hour is striking!... Good-bye!"
Her veil faded away, her smile became paler, her eyes closed, her form vanished and, through their tears, the children saw nothing but a thin ray of light dying away at their feet. Then they turned to the others ... but these had disappeared....