Paul was listening now with his undivided attention. He was being admitted to the very heart of an imaginative child’s world, and the knowledge of it charmed him inexpressibly. His eyes were almost as bright, his cheeks as pink with excitement, as her own. Only he must be very careful indeed. The least mistake on his part would close the door. ‘Months, Nixie?’ ‘Oh, yes, a single breath is months long,’ she whispered, her eyes growing in size, and darkening with wonder and awe. ‘Pouf lies on me and breathes twice to my once, but I breathe millions of times—ever so many millions—as I lie on the earth’s body. And it breathes in and out just as Pouf and I do. Winter is breathing in, and summer is breathing out, you see.’ ‘So the equinoctial gales are the changes from one breath to the other?’ he put in gravely. ‘I hadn’t thought about the—the gales,’ she said, putting her face closer and lowering her voice, ‘but I know that in the summer I often hear the earth breathing out—’specially on still warm nights when everything lies awake and listens for it.’ ‘Then do “Things” really listen as we do?’ he asked gently. ‘Not ’xactly as we do. We only listen in one place—our ears. They listen all over. But they’re alive just the same, though so much quieter. Oh, Uncle Paul, everything is alive; everything, I know it!’ She fixed a searching look on him. ‘You knew _that_, didn’t you?’ There was a trace of real surprise and disappointment in her voice. ‘Well,’ he answered truthfully, ‘I had often and often thought about it, and wondered sometimes—whether——’ But the child interrupted him almost imperiously. He realised sharply how the knowledge that the years bring—little, exact, precise knowledge—may kill the dreams of the naked soul, yet give nothing in their place but dust and ashes. And, by the same token, he recognised that his own heart was still untouched, unspoiled. The blood leaped and ran within him at the thought. ‘The winds, too, are alive,’—she spoke with a solemn excitement that made her delicate face flush as though a white fire glowed suddenly beneath the skin and behind the charming eyes—‘they run about, and sleep, and sing, and are full of voices. The wind has hundreds of voices—just like insects with such a lot of eyes.’ (Even her strange simile did not make him smile, so real was the belief and enthusiasm of her words.) ‘_We_ (with scorn) have only one voice; but the wind can laugh and cry at the same time!’ ‘I’ve heard it,’ he put in, secretly thrilled. ‘I know its angry voice as well as its pretended-angry voice, when it’s very loud but means nothing in particular. Its baby-voice, when it comes through the keyhole at night, or down the chimney, or just outside the window in the early morning, and tells me all its little very-wonderful-indeed aventures, makes me so happy I want to cry and laugh at once.’