Nobody knew that I had eaten the forbidden bear and strawberry. Grandmother Beers squeezed my hand just the same. Mother was as tender as always. And Father--his kind eyes and some little jest with me were almost more than I could bear. I remember spending the evening near them, with something sore about the whole time. From the moment that it began to get dark the presence of bear and strawberry came and fastened themselves upon me, so that I delayed bed-going even more than usual, and interminably prolonged undressing. Then there came the moment when Mother sat beside me. “Don’t ask God for anything,” she always said to me. “Just shut your eyes and think of his lovingness being here, close, close, close--breathing with you like your breath. Don’t ask him for anything.” But that night I scrambled into bed. “Not to-night, Mother,” I said. She never said anything when I said that. She kissed me and went away. _Then!_ There I was, face to face with it at last. What was it that had told me to eat the bear and the strawberry? What was it that had told me that these must not be eaten? What had made me obey one and not the other? Who was it that spoke to me like that? I shut my eyes and thought of the voice that had told me to eat, and it felt like the sore feeling in me and like the lump in my throat, and like unhappiness. I thought of the other gentle voice that had spoken and had kept speaking and at last had gone away--and suddenly, with my eyes shut, I was thinking of something like lovingness, close, close, breathing with me like my breath. So now I have made a story for that night. It is late, I know. But perhaps it is not too late. * * * * * Once upon a time a beautiful present was given to a little boy named Hazen. It was not a tent or a launch or a tree-top house or a pretend aeroplane, but it was a little glass casket. And it was the most wonderful little casket of all the kinds of caskets that there are. For in the casket was a little live thing, somewhat like a fairy and somewhat like a spirit, and so beautiful that everyone wanted one too. Now the little fairy (that was like a spirit) was held fast in the casket, which was tightly sealed. And when the casket was given to Hazen, the Giver said:-- “Hazen dear, until you get that little spirit free, you cannot be wise or really good or loved or beautiful. But after you get her free you shall be all four. And nobody can free her but you yourself, though you may ask anybody and everybody to tell you how.”