But the Star-Child did not move from his place. He shut the doors of his heart against her. The woman wept for pain.

At last he spoke to her, and his voice was hard and bitter.

‘If you are really my mother,’ he said, ‘stay away, and do not come here to bring me to shame. I thought I was the child of a Star, and not a beggar’s child, as you tell me that I am. Therefore get away, and let me never see you again!’

‘Alas! my son,’ she cried, ‘will you not kiss me before I go? I suffered much to find you.’

‘No,’ said the Star-Child, ‘you are very foul, I can’t look at you. I prefer to kiss the adder or the toad than you.’

So the woman rose up, and went away into the forest. She wept bitterly. When the Star-Child saw that she was away, he was glad, and ran back to his playmates to play with them.

But when they beheld him, they mocked him and said,

‘Oh, you are as foul as the toad, and as loathsome as the adder. Go away, because we don’t want to play with you!’

And they drove him out[11] of the garden.

The Star-Child frowned and said to himself,

‘What is this that they say to me? I will go to the river and look into it. It will tell me of my beauty.’

So he went to the river and looked into it, and lo! His face was as the face of a toad, and his body was like an adder. And he fell down on the grass and wept, and said to himself,

‘Surely this is the result of my sin. I denied my mother, and drove her away. I was proud, and cruel to her. I will go and seek her through the whole world. I will ask her to forgive me!’

A little daughter of the Woodcutter came to him. She put her hand upon his shoulder and said,

‘You lost your beauty  –  it does not matter[12]. Stay with us, and I will not mock at you.’

And he said to her,

‘No, I was cruel to my mother, and this evil is a punishment. I must go and wander through the world till I find her. I hope she will give me her forgiveness.’

So he ran away into the forest and called out to his mother to come to him, but there was no answer. All day long he called to her, and, when the sun set he lay down to sleep on a bed of leaves. The birds and the animals fled from him. They remembered his cruelty. He was alone save for the toad and the adder that watched him.

In the morning he rose up, and plucked some bitter berries from the trees and ate them. After that he went through the wood and wept sorely. And he wanted to know if anybody saw his mother.

He said to the Mole,

‘You can go beneath the earth. Tell me, is my mother there?’

And the Mole answered,

‘You blinded my eyes. How can I know?’

He said to the Linnet,

‘You can fly over the tops of the tall trees. You can see the whole world. Tell me, can you see my mother?’

And the Linnet answered,

‘You hurt my wings for your pleasure. How can I fly?’

And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said,

‘Where is my mother?’

And the Squirrel answered,

‘You killed my children. Do you want to kill her, too?’

And the Star-Child wept and bowed his head, and prayed forgiveness of God’s creatures. He went on through the forest, he looked for the beggar-woman. On the third day he came to the other side of the forest and went down into the plain[13].

When he passed through the villages the children mocked him, and threw stones at him. The farmers did not let him sleep even in the byres, because he was very foul. The workers drove him away, and there was none who had pity on him. Nor could he hear anywhere of the beggar-woman who was his mother.