On a night when all was dark and still, the very old woman and the beautiful youth sat side by side looking into the leaping flames.
Zorka raised her careworn face and scanned his thinning cheeks, his sunken eyes, and the beautiful hands that were nervously clasped on his knee. Her old heart ached with fearful desire for all that could not be.
"Son, my son!" she suddenly cried, "ah that I could tear the stars from the sky and throw them before thy feet! Oh that I could drag down the rays of the moon and hide them all in thy breaking heart to stop thy longing! that I could draw out all the richness of the earth and give it to thee, so that thou shouldst be at peace! But thus it is the wide world over; we think we have reached our soul's desire, and then we stand before it empty of all our hope."
As she spoke, sweet sounds of music came floating out of the dark—the soft notes of a violin in which all the sorrow of the earth seemed concentrated beneath the rippling cadence of joy.
Eric covered his face with his hands, and Zorka felt the burning tears rise to her dim old eyes, but she brushed them hastily away with the back of her hand.
"Dear young one," she said, "what can I do for thee? Hast thou not told me that thou wast once a great artist with fairy fingers, and that thou didst come all this endless way through joy, sorrow, and danger, in search of a face ... and now.... Oh, I have guessed it since many a day thou hast found that face—but where is thy art?
"Crave not for what thou canst not have, but cling to that which God has given thee. If I get thee brush and colour wilt thou try and create that face for a second time? Create it so that all should wonder how human hands could ever have been able to paint so glorious a treasure. When we cannot have the thing itself we must try and grasp its shadow."
"Oh!" cried Eric, "my old master said that the thing is God's."
"I do not know," said old Zorka, "if we pray to the same God, thou and I. Human beings always need forms into which they press their worship, but I, who am old, can tell thee this: there is but one God for all, and each man shapes Him according to the depth and breadth of his own little soul.
"When we are children and play on the ground we are taught to call Him Father! When we grow up we long for Him as a friend, but if He keeps His smile for others we curse Him and turn our backs and say we do not believe He exists. But when grief and despair knock at our door, we long to feel Him near us once more, but we have lost our way. We grope in the dark, we hit our hands and our heads, we cry, and we moan, we stumble and fall till we are laid low in the dust.