the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence deeper than
any silence you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like
being suddenly deaf and blind, only darker and quieter even than
that.

But before the children had got over the sudden shock of it
enough to be frightened, a faint, beautiful light began to show
in the middle of the circle, and at the same moment a faint,
beautiful voice began to speak. The light was too small for one
to see anything by, and the voice was too small for you to hear
what it said. You could just see the light and just hear the
voice.

But the light grew stronger. It was greeny, like glow-worms'
lamps, and it grew and grew till it was as though thousands and
thousands of glow-worms were signalling to their winged
sweethearts from the middle of the circle. And the voice grew,
not so much in loudness as in sweetness (though it grew louder,
too), till it was so sweet that you wanted to cry with pleasure
just at the sound of it. It was like nightingales, and the sea,
and the fiddle, and the voice of your mother when you have been a
long time away, and she meets you at the door when you get home.

And the voice said--

'Speak. What is it that you would hear?'

I cannot tell you what language the voice used. I only know that
everyone present understood it perfectly. If you come to think
of it, there must be some language that everyone could