"Quite ready," sighed the top of one cedar to the other. "And waiting, too," an answer came from nowhere. And then the Universe paused and settled with a little fluttering sound of wonder. The onceuponatime Moment entered the room.... "There was a thing that nobody could understand," began the deep, gruff voice. "And this thing that nobody could understand was something no one understood at all." "That's twice they couldn't understand it," observed Judy, in the slight pause he made for effect. "It was alive," he went on, "and very beautiful, so beautiful, in fact, that people were astonished and felt rather ashamed because they couldn't understand it. Some declared it wasn't worth understanding at all; others said it might be worth understanding if they had the time to think about it; and the rest decided that it was nothing much, and promptly forgot that it existed. Their lives grew rather dull in consequence. A few, however, set to work to discover what it was. For the beauty of it set something in them strangely burning." "It was a firework, I think," remarked Maria, then felt she had said quite an awful thing. For Tim just looked at her. "It's alive, Uncle Felix told you," he stated. She was obliterated--for the moment. "Yes," resumed the story-teller, "it was alive, and its beauty set the hearts of a few people on fire to know what it meant. It was difficult to find, however, and difficult to see properly when found. "These people tried to copy it, and couldn't. Though it looked so simple it was impossible to imitate. It went about so quickly, too, that they couldn't catch hold of it and--" "But have _you_ seen it?" asked Judy, her head bobbing up into his face with eager curiosity. It was a vital question. All waited anxiously for his reply. "I have," he answered convincingly. "I saw it first when I was about your age, and I've never forgotten it." "But you've seen it since, haven't you? It's still in the world, isn't it?" "I've seen it since, and it's still in the world. Only no one knows to this day why it's there. No one can explain it. No one can understand it. It's so beautiful that it makes you wonder, and it's so mysterious that it makes you--" "What?" asked Tim for the others, while he paused a moment and stared into their gazing faces. "Wonder still more," he added. Another pause followed. "Then is your heart still burning, Uncle Felix?" Judy enquired, prodding him softly. "And does it matter much?" "It matters a great deal, yes, because I want to find out, and cannot. And the burning goes on and on whenever I see the thing-that-nobody-can-understand, and even when I don't see it but just think about it--which is pretty often. Because, if I found out why it's there, I should know so much that I should give up writing storicalnovuls and become a sort of prophet instead."