"Look cosely at my flowers," she said, "and tell me which you think most beautiful."

Fairy Tenderheart.

Little Fairy Tenderheart was weeping. She sat on a ledge that overlooked the world, and her tears fell fast. In twos and threes her sisters flew from Fairyland to put their arms about her, but none could comfort her. "Come, dance and sing with us and forget your grief," they said. She shook her head. "The terrible fighting!" she said. "See where far below men rage, killing each other. Rivers run red with blood, and the sorrow of weeping women rises through the air to where I sit. How can I dance and sing?"

"It is the world at war," said an older fairy sadly. "I too have wept in earlier days when men have fought. But our tears are wasted, little sister. Come away."

Fairy Tenderheart looked eagerly at her. "You who have watched the world so many years," she said, "tell me why such dreadful deeds are done down there."

The older fairy bent her eyes on the blackened plains of earth. "I cannot tell you that," she slowly said. "We watch and pity, but we cannot know what works in the hearts of men that they should gather in their millions to destroy their brothers and themselves. No other creature turns on its own kind and kills so terribly as man."

In twos and threes her sisters flew from Fairyland to put their arms about her, but none could comfort her.

"What can we do? It must be stopped. What can we do?"

"We can do nothing, little sister. See where the women of the world stretch out their hands, imploring men to live in peace. They beg the lives of fathers, husbands, sons; they point to ruined homes and desolated lands. 'War wrecks our lives!' they cry. Yet even for those they love men will not give up battle. What, then, can fairies do? Tears are useless. Come away."

"I must stay here. I must think of something I can do," said Fairy Tenderheart; and she would not go.

Her tears had stopped. She searched with anxious eyes across the world to find some means of helping men to better things, but no way could she find. And still the fighters shot and stabbed, and the dying and the dead lay piled upon the fields.

Another fairy flew to her. "Come away, little sister!" she said. "I cannot bear to see you sorrowing. Come, or you will forget the merry ways of Fairyland and grow like the Oldest Fairy of All, who spends her life brooding over this dreary earth."

Fairy Tenderheart sprang up. "Where is she? Tell me where to find her. Why did I not know of her before? I will go to her that we may be companions in our sorrow. Perhaps together we may find a way to help."

"Ah, do not go. Listen! She is so old that she has watched the world since the beginning of wars, yet, as you see, she has found no way of stopping them. How then can you?"

"I must go."

"She left our joyful Fairyland for a Magic Garden, and whoever enters that Garden can never come back to us. There she dwells for ever alone, at work or in thought, or preparing for her mysterious journeys to the earth. Do not go, or you too will be cut off from our life of dance and song, never to return."

"I will go. Tell me the way."