"But it is surely more comfortable there?"
"Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than

being comfortable."
"Yes, indeed there are. Well, I will keep you in front of me.

You will feel the wind, but not too much. I shall only want one
arm to take care of you; the other will be quite enough to sink

the ship."
"Oh, dear North Wind! how can you talk so?"

"My dear boy, I never talk; I always mean what I say."
"Then you do mean to sink the ship with the other hand?"

"Yes."
"It's not like you."

"How do you know that?"
"Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy

with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other.
It can't be like you."

"Ah! but which is me? I can't be two mes, you know."
"No. Nobody can be two mes."

"Well, which me is me?"
"Now I must think. There looks to be two."

"Yes. That's the very point.--You can't be knowing the thing you
don't know, can you?"

"No."
"Which me do you know?"

"The kindest, goodest, best me in the world," answered Diamond,
clinging to North Wind.

"Why am I good to you?"
"I don't know."

"Have you ever done anything for me?"
"No."

"Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you."
"Yes."

"Why should I choose?"
"Because--because--because you like."

"Why should I like to be good to you?"
"I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me."

"That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good."
"Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?"

"That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?"
"I don't know either. Then why shouldn't you?"

"Because I am."
"There it is again," said Diamond. "I don't see that you are.

It looks quite the other thing."
"Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, you say,

and that is good."
"Yes."

"Do you know the other me as well?"
"No. I can't. I shouldn't like to."

"There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one
of them?"

"Yes."
"And you are sure there can't be two mes?"

"Yes."
"Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do know,--

else there would be two mes?"
"Yes."

"Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you
do know?"

"Yes."
"Besides, I tell you that it is so, only it doesn't look like it.

That I confessfreely. Have you anything more to object?"
"No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied."

"Then I will tell you something you might object. You might say
that the me you know is like the other me, and that I am cruel

all through."
"I know that can't be, because you are so kind."

"But that kindness might be only a pretence for the sake of being
more cruel afterwards."

Diamond clung to her tighter than ever, crying--
"No, no, dear North Wind; I can't believe that. I don't believe it.

I won't believe it. That would kill me. I love you, and you
must love me, else how did I come to love you? How could you

know how to put on such a beautiful face if you did not love
me and the rest? No. You may sink as many ships as you like,

and I won't say another word. I can't say I shall like to see it,
you know."

"That's quite another thing," said North Wind; and as she spoke
she gave one spring from the roof of the hay-loft, and rushed up

into the clouds, with Diamond on her left arm close to her heart.
And as if the clouds knew she had come, they burst into a fresh

jubilation of thunderous light. For a few moments, Diamond seemed
to be borne up through the depths of an ocean of dazzling flame;

the next, the winds were writhing around him like a storm of serpents.
For they were in the midst of the clouds and mists, and they

of course took the shapes of the wind, eddying and wreathing and
whirling and shooting and dashing about like grey and black water,

so that it was as if the wind itself had taken shape, and he saw
the grey and black wind tossing and raving most madly all about him.

Now it blinded him by smiting him upon the eyes; now it deafened
him by bellowing in his ears; for even when the thunder came he

knew now that it was the billows of the great ocean of the air
dashing against each other in their haste to fill the hollow

scooped out by the lightning; now it took his breath quite away
by sucking it from his body with the speed of its rush. But he did

not mind it. He only gasped first and then laughed, for the arm
of North Wind was about him, and he was leaning against her bosom.

It is quite impossible for me to describe what he saw. Did you ever
watch a great wave shoot into a winding passage amongst rocks?

If you ever did, you would see that the water rushed every way
at once, some of it even turning back and opposing the rest;

greater confusion you might see nowhere except in a crowd of
frightened people. Well, the wind was like that, except that it

went much faster, and therefore was much wilder, and twisted
and shot and curled and dodged and clashed and raved ten times

more madly than anything else in creation except human passions.
Diamond saw the threads of the lady's hair streaking it all.

In parts indeed he could not tell which was hair and which was
black storm and vapour. It seemed sometimes that all the great

billows of mist-muddy wind were woven out of the crossing lines
of North Wind's infinite hair, sweeping in endless intertwistings.

And Diamond felt as the wind seized on his hair, which his mother
kept rather long, as if he too was a part of the storm, and some

of its life went out from him. But so sheltered was he by North
Wind's arm and bosom that only at times, in the fiercer onslaught

of some curl-billowed eddy, did he recognise for a moment how wild
was the storm in which he was carried, nestling in its very core and

formative centre.
It seemed to Diamond likewise that they were motionless in this centre,

and that all the confusion and fighting went on around them.
Flash after flash illuminated the fierce chaos, revealing in varied

yellow and blue and grey and dusky red the vapourous contention;
peal after peal of thunder tore the infinite waste; but it seemed

to Diamond that North Wind and he were motionless, all but the hair.
It was not so. They were sweeping with the speed of the wind itself

towards the sea.
CHAPTER VII

THE CATHEDRAL
I MUST not go on describing what cannot be described, for nothing

is more wearisome.
Before they reached the sea, Diamond felt North Wind's hair just

beginning to fall about him.
"Is the storm over, North Wind?" he called out.

"No, Diamond. I am only waiting a moment to set you down.
You would not like to see the ship sunk, and I am going to give you

a place to stop in till I come back for you."
"Oh! thank you," said Diamond. "I shall be sorry to leave you,

North Wind, but I would rather not see the ship go down. And I'm
afraid the poor people will cry, and I should hear them. Oh, dear!"

"There are a good many passengers on board; and to tell the truth,
Diamond, I don't care about your hearing the cry you speak of.

I am afraid you would not get it out of your little head again
for a long time."

"But how can you bear it then, North Wind? For I am sure you are kind.
I shall never doubt that again."

"I will tell you how I am able to bear it, Diamond: I am always hearing,
through every noise, through all the noise I am making myself even,

the sound of a far-off song. I do not exactly know where it is,
or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of

its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean
outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear is

quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship.
So it would you if you could hear it."

"No, it wouldn't," returned Diamond, stoutly. "For they wouldn't
hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't

do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned,
and so we might enjoy it."

"But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it
is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right;

that it is coming to swallow up all cries."
"But that won't do them any good--the people, I mean," persisted Diamond.

"It must. It must," said North Wind, hurriedly. "It wouldn't
be the song it seems to be if it did not swallow up all their fear

and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with the rest.
I am sure it will. And do you know, ever since I knew I had hair,

that is, ever since it began to go out and away, that song has been
coming nearer and nearer. Only I must say it was some thousand years

before I heard it."
"But how can you say it was coming nearer when you did not hear it?"

asked doubting little Diamond.
"Since I began to hear it, I know it is growing louder, therefore I

judge it was coming nearer and nearer until I did hear it first.
I'm not so very old, you know--a few thousand years only--and I was

quite a baby when I heard the noise first, but I knew it must come
from the voices of people ever so much older and wiser than I was.

I can't sing at all, except now and then, and I can never tell what my
song is going to be; I only know what it is after I have sung it.--

But this will never do. Will you stop here?"
"I can't see anywhere to stop," said Diamond. "Your hair is all

down like a darkness, and I can't see through it if I knock my eyes
into it ever so much."

"Look, then," said North Wind; and, with one sweep of her great
white arm, she swept yards deep of darkness like a great curtain

from before the face of the boy.
And lo! it was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did

not shine with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars,
except where, just opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers

of a cathedral blotted out each its own shape of sky and stars.
"Oh! what's that?" cried Diamond, struck with a kind of terror,

for he had never seen a cathedral, and it rose before him with an
awful reality in the midst of the wide spaces, conquering emptiness

with grandeur.
"A very good place for you to wait in," said North Wind. "But we

shall go in, and you shall judge for yourself."
There was an open door in the middle of one of the towers, leading out

upon the roof, and through it they passed. Then North Wind set
Diamond on his feet, and he found himself at the top of a stone stair,

which went twisting away down into the darkness for only a little
light came in at the door. It was enough, however, to allow Diamond

to see that North Wind stood beside him. He looked up to find
her face, and saw that she was no longer a beautiful giantess,

but the tall gracious lady he liked best to see. She took his hand,

• knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
• confess [kən´fes] vt.供认；坦白；承认 (初中英语单词)
• freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
• thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
• lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• confusion [kən´fju:ʒən] n.混乱(状态)；骚乱 (初中英语单词)
• therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
• creation [kri´eiʃən] n.创作；作品；创造 (初中英语单词)
• likewise [´laikwaiz] ad.同样地；也，又 (初中英语单词)
• fierce [fiəs] a.残忍的；强烈的 (初中英语单词)
• waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
• swallow [swɔləu] n.燕子 v.吞，咽；淹没 (初中英语单词)
• anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
• cathedral [kə´θi:drəl] n.大教堂 (初中英语单词)
• reality [ri´æliti] n.现实(性)；真实；逼真 (初中英语单词)
• gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
• pretence [pri´tens] n.假装；托词；无理要求 (高中英语单词)
• amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
• nowhere [´nəuweə] n.无处；不知道 (高中英语单词)
• infinite [´infinit] a.无限的，无穷的 (高中英语单词)
• sweeping [´swi:piŋ] a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除 (高中英语单词)
• motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
• hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
• far-off [´fɑ:rɔ:f] a.远方的，遥远的 (英语四级单词)
• hurriedly [´hʌridli] ad.仓促地，忙乱地 (英语四级单词)
• taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
• dashing [´dæʃiŋ] a.勇猛的；生气勃勃的 (英语六级单词)