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CHAPTER XXX
For a moment the giant remained silent, his heart so torn by doubt and fear that he could not speak. But at length he said: "I have heard how you would restore the children to their parents …"
"I hope to do so," replied Truth.
He cried out in sorrow, "Yet none may restore me to my mother, whom I have lost."
"Be not so sure of that!" she said.
Whereupon hope was kindled in his heart. He pondered, feeling that he was in the presence of one who was very wise and kind. And then he said:
"And I have heard Everychild say that you are beautiful."
She did not reply to this. She waited for him to continue.
"You will forgive me for speaking what is in my heart," he said at length, "But my own mother, from whom I was driven by cruel, stupid persons long ago, was very beautiful. And I have always dreamed that some day I should encounter a beautiful lady and that she should prove to be the mother I lost."
She replied to him in a low voice: "And by what sign or token should you recognize her, if you were to encounter her again after all these years?"
"Alas, what hope is there for me, now that I am blind? While I could yet see I hoped to know her by her calm glance, by the serenity that never was troubled by any evil chance … I cannot say; but I never would believe that I should not be helped to recognize her."
She meditated a little. And presently she said, as she leaned closer to him, "And did you never give her anything—a token, perhaps—that she might have treasured and kept, by which you might recognize her?"
" I give her anything?" he exclaimed incredulously. "It was she who gave, not I. What was there I could have given her? And yet … I remember once when I was a child I brought her a pretty trifle, and her eyes grew bright and she drew me to her and laid her cheek against my hair. And there were other things—but they were only trifles, after all."
"Trifles?" she echoed passionately, "trifles?"
He began, "There was——" And then he broke off. "I am ashamed to say," he said. "It was nothing."
She reflected earnestly. And at length she said, with new eagerness in her voice, "But if you ever find your mother, and fail to know her, and she shall tell you what those trifles were—you shall know that it is she. Is it not so?"
"It is true," he said.
A rapturous smile began to illumine her face. "Trifles, dear child!" she cried. "Should you call them trifles?—One was the first song ever sung; and one was the first tale ever told——"
She paused, because he had clasped his hands together in ecstacy and seemed almost to cease to breathe.
"And one," she continued, "was the first picture; and one——" Her voice became all but inaudible, "—one was the first prayer."
His voice arose in a great shout of triumph. "You are she!" he cried "You are indeed she!"
And he reached forth and clasped her in his arms. At last they were united again.