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.
Selfish Grief
"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."
Some One Gift
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."