"Glorious, by Jove!" he exclaimed
between great puffs of smoke. "I've struck a fact!" He had been so
busily creating these last days that he had lost the yearning to
describe merely what others did. The children had caught him body and
soul in their eternal world of wonder and belief. Judy and Tim had
taught him this.
Yet, somehow, it was the inactive, calm Maria who loomed up in his
thoughts as the principal enchantress. Maria's apparent inactivity was
a blind; she did not do very much in the sense of rushing helter-
skelter after desirable things, but she obtained them nevertheless.
She got in their way so that they ran into her--then she claimed them.
She knew beforehand, as it were, the way they would take. She was
always there when anything worth happening was about. And though she
spoke so little--during a general conversation, for instance--she said
so much. At the end of all the talk, it was always Maria who had said
the important thing. Her "why" and "why not" that very afternoon were
all that he remembered of the intricate and long discussion. It left
the odd impression on his mind that talk, all the world over, said one
thing only; that the millions of talkers on the teeming earth, eagerly
chattering in many languages, said one and the same thing only.
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