but had a positive, palpable quality, it enshrouded her as by heavy folds of black velvet that suffocated her, but, as she climbed, the air became lighter and the darkness less.
She longed to stop for a few moments and rest, but the pitiless Power continually urged her on. Bats fluttered past her and ghostly wings brushed her face, but, strangely, she had no fear. As her eyes became accustomed to the all-encompassing night, she saw into it for a little distance on either side, but never ahead.
On the left was a vast, empty garden, neglected and dead. The hedge that surrounded it was only a tangled mass of undergrowth, and the paths were buried and choked by weeds. The desolate house beyond it loomed up whitely in the shadow. It was damp and cold in the garden, but she went in, mutely obeying the blind force that impelled her to go.
She struggled up the path that led to the house, falling once into a mass of thistles that pricked and stung. The broken marbles, as she saw now, were statues that had been placed about the garden and had fallen into decay. The slow-falling water was a fountain that still murmured, choked though it was by the dense undergrowth.
One of the steps that led to the house had fallen inward, so she put her knee on the one above that and climbed up. She tested each step of the long flight carefully before she trusted herself to it. When she reached the broad porch, her footsteps echoed strangely upon the floor. Each slight sound was caught up and repeated until it sounded like the tread of a marching army, vanishing into the distance.
The heavy door creaked on its hinges when she opened it. That sound, too, echoed and re-echoed in rhythmic pulsations that beat painfully upon her ears, but, after she was once inside, all the clamour ceased.
She could see clearly now, though it was still dark. A long, wide stairway wound up from the hall, and there were two great rooms upon either side. She turned into the wide doorway at the right.
Windows, grey with cobwebs, stretched from floor to ceiling, but very little light came through them. The wall paper, of indistinguishable pattern, was partially torn from the walls and the hanging portions swayed in the same current of air that waved the cobwebs. There was no furniture of any description in the room, except the heavy, gilt-framed mirror over the mantel. It was cracked and much of the gilt frame had fallen away. She went into the next room, then into the one beyond that, which seemed to stretch across the back of the house, and so through the door at the left of the room into the two on the other side of the house, at the left of the hall.
In the centre of the largest room was a small table, upon which rested a small object covered with a dome-shaped glass shade, precisely like that which covered the basket of wax flowers in Grandmother's parlour. Rosemary went to it with keen interest and leaned over the table to peer in.
At first she could see nothing, for the glass was cloudy. She noted, with a pang of disgust, that the table-cover was made of brown alpaca, fringed all around by the fabric itself, cut unskilfully into shreds with the scissors. As she looked, the glass slowly cleared.
The small object was heart-shaped and made of wax in some dull colour half-way between red and brown. At length she saw that it was broken and the pieces had been laid together, carefully. Unless she had looked very closely she would not have seen that it was broken.
Suddenly she felt a Presence in the room, and looked up quickly, with terror clutching at her inmost soul. A tall, grey figure, mysteriously shrouded, stood motionless beside her. Only the eyes were unveiled and visible amid the misty folds of the fabric.
The eyes held her strangely. They were deep and dark and burning with secret fires. Hunger and longing were in their depths, and yet there was a certain exaltation, as of hope persisting against the knowledge of defeat.
Rosemary's terror gradually vanished. She felt an all-pervading calmness, a sense of acceptance, of fulfilment.
For a long time she stood there, transfixed by the eyes that never for an instant wavered from hers. They searched her inmost soul; they saw all things past and to come. They questioned her, challenged her, urged something upon her, and yet she was not afraid.
At last, with dry lips, she spoke. "Who are you?" She did not recognise the sound of her own voice.
"The Lord of Life," the figure answered, in low, deep tones that vibrated through the empty rooms like the swept strings of a harp.
"And this is – ?"
"The House of the Broken Heart. I live here."
"Why?" she asked.
"Not of my own choice. Why have you come?"
"Not of my own choice," she repeated, dully. "I came because I had to."
"They all do. That is why I myself am here."
"Do – do many come?"
"Yes."
Rosemary looked back over her shoulder, then lifted her eyes to those of the grey figure. "Then it is strange," she said, "that I am here alone."
"You are not alone. These rooms are full, but no one sees another in the House of the Broken Heart. Each one is absorbed in his own grief to the exclusion of all else. Only I may see them, with bowed heads, pacing to and fro.
"On the stairway," he went on, "is a young mother who has lost her child. She goes up and down endlessly, thinking first she hears it crying for her in the room above, and then in the room below. Her husband sits at the foot of the stairs with his face hidden in his hands, but she has no thought for him. He has lost wife and child too."
"Poor man!" said Rosemary, softly. "Poor woman!"
"Yonder is a grey-haired woman, reaping the bitterness that she has sown. There are a husband and wife who have always been jealous of one another, and will be, until the end of time. There is a girl who has trusted and been betrayed, but she will go out again when her courage comes back. Just behind you is a woman who has estranged her husband from his family and has found his heart closed to her in the hour of her greatest need. Coming toward you is a man who was cruel to his wife, and never knew it until after she was dead."
"But," Rosemary asked, "is there no punishment?"
"None whatever, except this. The consciousness of a sin is its own punishment."
She stood there perplexed, leaning against the table. "Have all who are here, then, sinned?"
"No, some have been sinned against, and a few, like yourself, have come in by mistake."
"Then I may go?"
The Lord of Life bent his head graciously. "Whenever you choose. You have only to take your gift and depart."
"Is there a gift here for me? Nobody ever gave me anything."
"Some one gift is yours for the asking, and, because you have not sinned, you have the right to choose. What shall it be?"
"Love," returned Rosemary, very wistfully. "Oh, give me love!"
The Lord of Life sighed. "So many ask for that," he said. "They all confuse the end with the means. What they really want is joy, but they ask for love."
"Is there a greater joy than love?"
"No, but love in itself is not joy. It is always service and it may be sacrifice. It means giving, not receiving; asking, not answer."
"None the less," said Rosemary, stubbornly, "I will take love."
"They all do," he returned. "Wait."
He vanished so quickly that she could not tell which way he had gone. As she leaned against the table, the brown alpaca cover slipped back on the marble table and the glass case tottered. She caught it hurriedly and saved it from falling, but the waxen pieces of the heart quivered underneath.
The grey figure was coming back, muffled to the eyes as before, but his footsteps made no sound. He moved slowly, yet with a certain authority. He laid a letter on the table and Rosemary snatched it up eagerly. It was addressed to Mrs. Virginia Marsh.
"That