“They also are dead.”
“But where are the younger ones who sang here so gladly as they marched upward? Surely they, are living?”
“They have forgotten.”
“Where then are the young children whose fathers taught them this way and bade them remember it. Have they forgotten?”
“They have forgotten.”
“But why have you alone kept the hour of visitation? Why have you not turned back with your companions? How have you walked here solitary day after day?”
She turned to me with a divine regard, and laying her hand gently over mine, she said, “I remember always.”
Then I saw a few wild-flowers blossoming beside the path.
We drew near to the Source, and entered into the chamber hewn in the rock. She kneeled and bent over the sleeping spring. She murmured again and again the beautiful name of him who had died to find it. Her voice repeated the song that had once been sung by many voices. Her tears fell softly on the spring, and as they fell it seemed as if the water stirred and rose to meet her bending face, and when she looked up it was as if the dew had fallen on a flower.
We came very slowly down the path along the river Carita, and rested often beside it, for surely, I thought, the rising of the spring had sent a little more water down its dry bed, and some of it must flow on to the city. So it was almost evening when we came back to the streets. The people were hurrying to and fro, for it was the day before the choosing of new Princes of Water; and there was much dispute about them, and strife over the building of new cisterns to hold the stores of rain which might fall in the next year. But none cared for us, as we passed by like strangers, and we came unnoticed to the door of the house.