henceforth to flow into her
for ever, and ebb no more. She answered the morning wind with reviving
breath, and began to listen. For in the skirts of the wind had come
the rain--the soft rain that heals the mown, the many-wounded
grass--soothing it with the sweetness of all music, the hush that lives
between music and silence. It bedewed the desert places around the
cottage, and the sands of Lilith's heart heard it, and drank it in. When
Mara returned to sit by her bed, her tears were flowing softer than the
rain, and soon she was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XL. THE HOUSE OF DEATH

The Mother of Sorrows rose, muffled her face, and went to call the
Little Ones. They slept as if all the night they had not moved, but
the moment she spoke they sprang to their feet, fresh as if new-made.
Merrily down the stair they followed her, and she brought them where the
princess lay, her tears yet flowing as she slept. Their glad faces grew
grave. They looked from the princess out on the rain, then back at the
princess.

"The sky is falling!" said one.

"The white juice is running out of the princess!" cried another, with an
awed look.

"Is it rivers?" asked Odu, gazing at the little streams that flowed
adown her hollow cheeks.

"Yes," answered Mara, "--the most wonderful of all rivers."

"I thought rivers was bigger, and rushed, like a lot of Little Ones,
making loud noises!" he returned, looking at me, from whom alone he had
heard of rivers.

"Look at the rivers of the sky!" said Mara. "See how they come down
to wake up the waters under the earth! Soon will the rivers be flowing
everywhere, merry and loud, like thousands and thousands of happy
children. Oh, how glad they will make you, Little Ones! You have never
seen any, and do not know how lovely is the water!"

"That will be the glad of the ground that the princess is grown good,"
said Odu. "See the glad of the sky!"

"Are the rivers the glad of the princess?" asked Luva. "They are not her
juice, for they are not red!"

"They are the juice inside the juice," answered Mara.

Odu put one finger to his eye, looked at it, and shook his head.

"Princess will not bite now!" said Luva.

"No; she will never do that again," replied Mara. "--But now we must
take her nearer home."

"Is that a nest?" asked Sozo.

"Yes; a very big nest. But we must take her to another place first."

"What is that?"

"It is the biggest room in all this world.--But I think it is going to