been looking for Kay! Don't you know where he is?' she asked the roses.
'Do you think he is dead and gone?'

'He is not dead,' said the roses. 'For we have been down underground,
you know, and all the dead people are there, but Kay is not among them.'

'Oh, thank you!' said little Gerda, and then she went to the other
flowers and looked into their cups and said, 'Do you know where Kay is?'

But each flower stood in the sun and dreamt its own dreams. Little Gerda
heard many of these, but never anything about Kay.

And what said the Tiger lilies?

'Do you hear the drum? rub-a-dub, it has only two notes, rub-a-dub,
always the same. The wailing of women and the cry of the preacher. The
Hindu woman in her long red garment stands on the pile, while the flames
surround her and her dead husband. But the woman is only thinking of the
living man in the circle round, whose eyes burn with a fiercer fire than
that of the flames which consume the body. Do the flames of the heart
die in the fire?'

'I understand nothing about that,' said little Gerda.

'That is my story,' said the Tiger lily.

'What does the convolvulus say?'

'An old castle is perched high over a narrow mountain path, it is
closely covered with ivy, almost hiding the old red walls, and creeping