Jean murmurs: “What brings happiness is to love, not to be loved.”
And then, as if the familiar words were being uttered infinitely far away, she hears—“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings——”
Then the voice comes nearer, it is close to her ear.
“Before I go back, far, far away, to the land of dreams, I have a message for you, Miss Jean.”
“A message, dream-friend?”
“A message from Harry Garlett’s soul to yours. He asks you to remember that ‘stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.’ He says he feels happy—happy in spite of all that has happened—because he possesses your love.”
And then the voice becomes infinitely sad: “There is no love where I live—in Goblin Land—only an ugly imitation of love. Still, even an ugly imitation of the greatest thing in the world is better than no love at all,” and there is something so mournful, so hopeless in the voice that utters those words that Jean feels keenly distressed. Were she not so drowsy the tears would come into her eyes.
“Hobgoblins, strange and horrible shapes of pain and death, haunt my dwelling-place,” goes on her dream-friend. “True there is no unjust judge, no stupid, conceited set of jurymen, but as a terrible set-off to that relief there is no rapture—or none to speak of—in the land of dreams. You and Harry Garlett have the best of it, even now, in the waking world, Miss Jean. And now, dream happy dreams, poor child, happy, happy dreams....”
The next morning but one Elsie was bustling about her kitchen, but ever since she had seen those pallid faces pressed against the window-pane she had left the shutters closed till after breakfast.
Soon there came the sound of milk cans jingling against one another, so she hurried into the scullery and cautiously unlocked the back door.