"Oh, do I! You seem to know more about me than I know about myself. When you have lived longer, you may not feel so certain about understanding other people. But then I'm not people," he added joyously, and they heard him push his way further back under the boughs of the Tree--withdrawing more deeply into its mystery. "Now then, while I wait, what shall we do?" IV TIME-SPIRIT AND ETERNAL SPIRIT A HURRIED whispering began among the children, and the result was quickly announced:-- "We should like to ask you some questions." Evidently the intention was that questions should riddle him--make reasonable daylight shine through his mysterious pretensions: on the stage of his own theatre he was to be stripped. "I treat all children alike," he replied with immediate insistence on his divine rights. "And if any could ask, all should ask. But suppose every living child asked me a question. That would be at least a million to every hair on my head: don't you think that would make any head a little heavy? Besides, I've always gotten along so well all over the world because I have done what I had to do and have never stopped to talk. As soon as you begin to talk, don't you get into trouble--with somebody? Who has ever forced a word out of me!" How alert he was, nimble, brisk, alive! A marvellous kind of mental arctic light from him began to spread through the pitchiness of the room as from a sun hidden below the horizon. "But everything seems going to pieces tonight," he continued; "and maybe I might let my silence go to pieces also. Your request is granted--but--remember, one question apiece--the first each thinks of--and not quarrelsome: this is no night for quarrelsome questions!" The lot of asking the first fell naturally to Elsie, and her question had her history back of it; the question of each had life-history.