in, Noodle saw how memory had made it more beautiful than
ever, and how between her lips had grown the tender parting of a
smile. Then he laid the Rose where the movement of the heart should
be; and presently under the white breast rose the music of its
beating.

'Ah!' cried the old nurse, weeping for happiness, 'now her heart that
loved me is come back, and I can listen all day to the sound of it!
You have brought memory to her, you have brought love; now bring
breath, and the awakening of her five senses. Surely the light of her
eyes will be your reward!'

[Illustration]

VI

THE CAMPHOR-WORM

'Tell me quickly of the Camphor-Worm,' cried the youth as he feasted
his eyes on the Princess's loveliness, made more unendurable by the
awakening within of love. 'Where and what is it?' 'It is not so far as
was the way to the Burning Rose,' answered the crone; 'an hour on the
back of the Plough shall bring it near to you; but the danger
and difficulty of this quest is more, not less. For to reach the
Camphor-Worm you need to be a diver in deep waters, whose weight
crushes a man; and to touch its lips you must master the loathing of
your nature; and to carry away its breath you must have strength of
will and endurance beyond what is mortal.' 'You trouble me with things
I need not know,' cried Noodle. 'Tell me,' he said, 'how I may reach
the Camphor-Worm; and of it and its ways.'

'By this path, and by that,' said the old woman, pointing him, 'go on
till you come to the thick waters of the Bitter Lake; they are blacker
than night, and their weight is heavier than lead, and in the depths
dwells the Camphor-Worm. Once a year, when the air is sweetest with
the scents of summer, she rises to breathe, lifting her black snout
through the surface of the waters. Then she draws fresh air into her
lungs, flavoured with leaves and flowers, and after she has breathed
it in she lets go the last bubble of the breath she drew from the
summer of the year before; and it is this bubble of breath alone that
will give back life to the five senses of Princess Melilot. But the
Worm's time for rising is far; and how you shall bear the weight in
the depths of those waters, or make the Worm give up the bubble before
her time, or at last bear back the bubble to lay it on the lips of the
Princess so that she may wake,--these are things I know not the way
of, for to my eyes they seem dark with difficulty and peril.'

Then Noodle, opening t