Far, far below this place where now we sit, close to earth heart itself were they born; and there they dwelt for time upon time, _laya_ upon _laya_ upon _laya_--with others, not like them, some of which have vanished time upon time agone, others that still dwell--below--in their--cradle.
"It is hard"-- she hesitated--"hard to tell this--that slips through my mind--because I know so little that even as the Three told it to me it passed from me for lack of place to stand upon," she went on, quaintly.

"Something there was of time when earth and sun were but cold mists in the--the heavens--something of these mists drawing together, whirling, whirling, faster and faster--drawing as they whirled more and more of the mists--growing larger, growing warm--forming at last into the globes they are, with others spinning around the sun--something of regions within this globe where vast fire was prisoned and bursting forth tore and rent the young orb--of one such bursting forth that sent what you call moon flying out to company us and left behind those spaces whence we now dwell--and of--of life particles that here and there below grew into the race of the Silent Ones, and those others--but not the _Akka_ which, like you, they say came from above--and all this I do not understand--do you, Goodwin ?" she appealed to me.
I nodded--for what she had related so fragmentarily was in reality an excellent approach to the Chamberlain-Moulton theory of a coalescing nebula contracting into the sun and its planets.
Astonishing was the recognition of this theory.

Even more so was the reference to the life particles, the idea of Arrhenius, the great Swede, of life starting on earth through the dropping of minute, life _spores_, propelled through space by the driving power of light and, encountering favourable environment here, developing through the vast ages into man and every other living thing we know.[1] Nor was it incredible that in the ancient nebula that was the matrix of our solar system similar, or rather _dissimilar_, particles in all but the subtle essence we call life, might have become entangled and, resisting every cataclysm as they had resisted the absolute zero of outer space, found in these caverned spaces their proper environment to develop into the race of the Silent Ones and--only _they_ could tell what else! "They say," the handmaiden's voice was surer, "they say that in their--cradle--near earth's heart they grew; grew untroubled by the turmoil and disorder which flayed the surface of this globe.

And they say it was a place of light and that strength came to them from earth heart--strength greater than you and those from which you sprang ever derived from sun.
"At last, ancient, ancient beyond all thought, they say again, was this time--they began to know, to--to--realize--themselves.

And wisdom came ever more swiftly.