Maya opened her eyes wide in terror.
“Then hurry, hurry! Fly back into your flower!”
The, sprite shook his head sadly.
“Too late.—But listen. I have more to tell you. Most of us sprites are glad to leave our flowers never to return, because a great happiness is connected with our leaving. We are endowed with a remarkable power: before we die, we can fulfill the dearest wish of the first creature we meet. It is when we make up our minds seriously to leave the flower for the purpose of making someone happy that our wings grow.”
“How wonderful!” cried Maya. “I’d leave the flower too, then. It must be lovely to fulfill another person’s wish.” That she was the first being whom the sprite on his flight from the flower had met, did not occur to her. “And then—must you die?”
The sprite nodded, but not sadly this time.
“We live to see the dawn still,” he said, “but when the dew falls, we are drawn into the fine cobwebby veils that float above the grass and the flowers of the meadows. Haven’t you often noticed that the veils shine white as though a light were inside them? It’s the sprites, their wings and their garments. When the light rises we change into dew-drops. The plants drink us and we become a part of their growing and blooming until in time we rise again as sprites from out their flowers.”
“Then you were once another sprite?” asked Maya, tense, breathless with interest.
The earnest eyes said yes.
“But I have forgotten my earlier existence. We forget everything in our flower-sleep.”