"Yes," she mentioned quietly, as to herself, "and I'll have a forget-me-not." Her eyes rolled up sideways, meeting those of her uncle as he turned and noticed her. For quite suddenly he "noticed" her, became aware that she was there, discovered her. He stared a moment, as though reflecting. That "yes" had a queer, familiar sound about it, surely. "Maria," he said, "I believe you will. Everything comes to you of its own accord somehow." She nodded. "And there's another thing. You've got a secret--haven't you?" It occurred to him that Maria was rather wonderful. "I expect so," she answered, after a moment's pause. She looked wiser than an owl, he thought. "What is it? What _is_ your secret? Can't you tell me?" For it came over him that Maria, for all her inactivity, was really more truly alive than both the other children put together. Their tireless, incessant energy was nothing compared to some deep well of life Maria's outer calm concealed. He continued to stare at her, reflecting while he did so. Through her globular exterior, standing here beside him, rose this quiet tide whose profound and inexhaustible source was nothing less than the entire universe. Finding himself thus alone with her, he knew his imagination singularly stirred. The full stream of this imagination--usually turned into sea--and history-stories--poured now into Maria. It was the way she had delivered herself of the monosyllable, "Yes," that first enflamed him. The child, obviously, was quite innocent that her uncle's imagination clothed her in such wonder; she was entirely unselfconscious, and remained so; but, as she kept silent as well, there was nothing to interrupt the natural process of his thought. "You're a circle, a mystery, a globe of wonder," his mind addressed her, gazing downwards half in play and half in earnest. "You're always going it. Though you seem so still--you're turning furiously like a little planet!" For this abruptly struck him, flashing the symbol into his imagination--that Maria lived so close to the universe that her life and movements were akin to those of the heavenly bodies. He saw her as an epitome of the earth. Fat, peaceful, little, calm, rotund Maria--a miniature earth! She had no call to hurry nor rush after things. Like the earth she contained all things within herself. It made him smile; he smiled as he looked down into her face; she smiled as she rolled her blue eyes upwards into his. Yet her calm was not the calm of sloth. In that mysterious centre where she lived he felt her as tremendously alive.