She paused a moment for breath, dimly conscious, perhaps, that her description was somewhat confused. Her excitement somehow communicated itself to Pouf at the same time, for the kitten suddenly rose up with an arched back and indulged in a yawn that would have cracked the jaws of any self-respecting creature. After a prolonged stare at Paul, it proceeded inconsequently to wash itself with an air that plainly said, ‘You won’t catch me napping again. _I_ want to hear this too.’ Paul, meanwhile, stared at the child beside him, thinking that the gold-dust on her hair must surely come from her tumbling journeys among the stars, and wondering if she understood how deeply she saw into the heart of things with those dreamy blue eyes of hers. ‘Listen, Nixie, you fairy-child, and I’ll tell you something,’ he said gently, ‘something you will like very much’; and, while she waited and held her breath, he whispered softly in her ear: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises in us, our life’s star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home. CHAPTER XVII And snatches of thee everywhere Make little heavens throughout a day. ALICE MEYNELL. ‘That’s very pretty, I think,’ she said politely, staring at him, with a little smile, half puzzled. The music of the words had touched her, but she evidently did not grasp why he should have said it. She waited a minute to see if he had really finished, and then went on again with her own vein of thought. ‘Then please tell me, Uncle,’ she asked gravely, with deep earnestness, ‘what is it people lose when they grow up?’ And he answered her with equal gravity, speaking seriously as though the little body at his side were habited by an old, discriminating soul. ‘Simplicity, I think, principally—and vision,’ he said. ‘They get wise with so many little details called facts that they lose the great view.’ The child watched his face, trying to understand. After a pause she came back to her own thinking—the sphere where she felt sure of herself. ‘They never see things properly once they’re grown up,’ she said sadly. ‘They all walk into a fog, _I_ believe, that hides all the things _we_ know, and stuffs up their eyes and ears. Daddy called it the cotton-wool of age, you know. Oh, Uncle, I do hope,’ she cried with the sudden passion of the child, ‘I _do_ hope I shall never, never get into that horrid fog. _You_ haven’t, and I won’t, won’t, won’t!’ Her voice rose to a genuine cry. Then she added with a touch of child-wonder that followed quite naturally upon the outburst, ‘How did you ever stop yourself, I wonder!’