“My children, you have chosen the rose. Be content. Yet in another life remember and cling to that which unsevered from the parent tree sends roots into the Now, the Then, and the Future, and blossoms immortally.”
So he dismissed them kindly.
“He means,” said Martin with troubled brow, “that ordinary household happiness shuts a man in from the stars. Do you remember the flute of Pan, B. V.? He tore the reed from the river and massacred it as a reed to make it a music-bearer for the Gods.
“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.”
“But we are so happy!” she whispered, clinging against him to feel the warmth of his love. “The outer spaces are cold, cold. I don’t regret V. Lydiat. I have you. The reeds were happier in the river.”
Martin Welland sighed.
“You had both,” he said. “You have only me now.”
But that regret also slipped away. They forgot. It all faded into the light of common day and they were extremely happy.