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Page 69
"You thought, perhaps, that Hiero was as dead as the little beetle;
but he lives more beautifully in you!"
He looked startled up, his large eyes glittering blackly in the
paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious
disputant willing to make allowances, continued,--
"It may be different in the outside world from which you come; but
here death ends nothing, but makes life new and strong."
After a silence of some duration, poor Balder renewed his attack from
another quarter.
"What would you think of one who put to death a creature you loved?"
She smiled, and shook her glowing pendants.
"Only God puts to death; and no one would hurt a thing I love!"
"What should you think of one who put to death a man?"
Gnulemah looked for a moment perplexed and indignant. Then, to
Balder's great discomfiture, she laughed like a bird-chorus.
"Why do you imagine what cannot be? Would you and Hiero kill each
other? The gray owl kills little mice, but that is to eat them. Would
you eat Hiero--"
"Don't laugh, Gnulemah!" besought he. "I should kill him, not as
animals kill one another, but from rage and hatred."
"Hatred!" repeated Gnulemah, dislikingly; "hatred,--what is it?"
"A passion of men's hearts,--the wish that evil may befall others.
When the hatred is bitter enough, and the opportunity fair, they
kill!"
Gnulemah shuddered slightly and looked sad. Then she leaned towards
Balder and touched his shoulder persuasively.
"Never think of such things, or talk of them! Could you hate anyone,
Balder? or kill him if you did?"
With that glorious presence so near him,--her voice so close to his
ear,--how could he answer her? His heart awoke, and beat and drove the
tingling blood tumultuously forth to the remotest veins. She saw the
flush, and caught the passionate brilliancy of his eyes. Happy and
afraid, she drew back, saying in haste,--
"You have not told me yet about the ring!"
That was not wisely said! Balder checked himself with a sudden, strong
hand, and held still,--his brows lowered down and his lips settled
together,--until his pulses were quiet and his cheeks once more pale.
"I will tell you," he said; "but to understand, you must first hear
some other things." He hesitated, face to face with an analysis of
murder. The position was at once stimulating and appalling. To dissect
and reduce to its elements that grisly murder-devil which had once
possessed his own soul, and whose writhings beneath the scalpel he
would therefore feel as his own--here loomed a prospect large and
terrible! Nevertheless, Balder took up the knife.
The white petal of an apple-blossom, part from its calyx, came
floating earthwards; but a breeze caught it and wafted it aloft. It
sank again, and was again arrested and borne skywards. Finally is
disappeared over the cliff-edge.
"The weight that made it fall is of the earth," said Balder (both he
and Gnulemah had been watching the petal's course). "The breeze that
buoyed it up was from heaven, and so it is with man. Were there no
heavenly support, he would fall at once, but whether or not, he always
tends to fall."
Gnulemah objected, "It loves the air better than the earth!"
"When man begins to fall, he becomes mad, and thinks he is not
falling, but that earth is heaven, to which he is rising. But since
earth is not like heaven, infinite, he does not wish others to enjoy
it, lest his own pleasure be marred."
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