them and blew upon the spark until it burned ever stronger and in time
they became much as they are now--my _Akka_.

"The Three took counsel after this and said--'We have strengthened
life in these until it has become articulate; shall we not _create_
life?'" Again she hesitated, her eyes rapt, dreaming. "The Three are
speaking," she murmured. "They have my tongue--"

And certainly, with an ease and rapidity as though she were but a
voice through which minds far more facile, more powerful poured their
thoughts, she spoke.

"Yea," the golden voice was vibrant. "We said that what we would
create should be of the spirit of life itself, speaking to us with the
tongues of the far-flung stars, of the winds, of the waters, and of
all upon and within these. Upon that universal matrix of matter, that
mother of all things that you name the ether, we laboured. Think not
that her wondrous fertility is limited by what ye see on earth or what
has been on earth from its beginning. Infinite, infinite are the forms
the mother bears and countless are the energies that are part of her.

"By our wisdom we had fashioned many windows out of our abode and
through them we stared into the faces of myriads of worlds, and upon
them all were the children of ether even as the worlds themselves were
her children.

"Watching we learned, and learning we formed that ye term the Dweller,
which those without name--the Shining One. Within the Universal Mother
we shaped it, to be a voice to tell us her secrets, a lamp to go
before us lighting the mysteries. Out of the ether we fashioned it,