It was in my room. He brought it—the breakfast—dish after dish, smoking hot, from my empty cupboard, and briskly set the table, talking all the while—ah, yes, and pleasantly, fascinatingly, winningly; and not about that so-recent episode, but about these fragrant refreshments and the far countries he had summonedⒶ them

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from—Cathay,Ⓐ India, and everywhere; and as I was famishing, this talk was pleasingⒶ, indeed captivating, and under its influence my sour mood presently passed from me. Yes, and it was healing to my bruisedⒶ spirit to look upon the rich and costly table-service—quaint of shape and pattern, delicate, ornate, exquisite, beautiful!—and presently quite likely to be mine, you see.

“Hot corn-poneⒶ from Arkansas—split it, butter it, close your eyes and enjoy! Fried spring chicken—milk-and-flour gravy—from Alabama. Try it, and grieve for the angels, for they have it not! Cream-smothered strawberries, with the prairie-dew still on them —let them melt in your mouth, and don't try to say what you feel! Coffee from ViennaⒶ—fluffed cream—twoⒶ pellets of saccharinⒶⒶ—drink, and have compassion for the Olympian gods that know only nectar!”

I ate, I drank, I reveled in these alien wonders; truly I was in Paradise!

“It is intoxication,” I said, “it is delirium!”

“It's a jag!” he responded.

I inquired about some of the refreshmentsⒶ that had outlandishⒶ namesⒶ. Again that weirdⒶ detail:Ⓐ they were non-existent as yet, they were products of the unborn future! Understand it? How could I? Nobody could. The mere trying muddled the head. And yet it was a pleasure to turn those curious names over on the tongue and taste them: Corn-poneⒶ! Arkansas! Alabama! Prairie! Coffee! Saccharin! Forty-Four answered my thought with a stingy word of explanation—

“Corn-pone is made from maize. Maize is known only in America. America is not discovered yet. Arkansas and Alabama will be States, and will get their names two or three centuries hence. Prairie—a future French-AmericanⒶ term for a meadow like an ocean. Coffee: they have it in the Orient, they will have it here in Austria two centuries from now. Saccharin—concentrated sugar, 500 to 1; as it were, the sweetness of five hundred pretty maids concentrated in a young fellow's sweetheart. Saccharin is not due yet for nearly four hundred years; I am furnishing you several advance-privileges, you see.”

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“Tell me a little, little more, 44—pleaseⒶ! You starve me so! and I am so hungry to know how you find out these strange marvels, these impossible things.”

He reflected a while, then he said he was in a mood to enlighten me, and would like to do it, but did not know how to go about it, because of my mental limitations and the general meanness and poverty of my construction and qualities. He said this in a most casual and taken-for-granted way, just as an archbishop might say it to a cat, never suspecting that the cat could have any feelings about it or take a different view of the matter. My face flushed, and I said with dignity and a touch of heat—Ⓐ

“I must remind you that I am made in the image of God.”

“Yes,” he said carelessly, but did not seem greatly impressed by it, certainly not crushed, not overpowered. I was more indignant than ever, but remained mute, coldly rebuking him by my silence. But it was wastedⒶ on him; he did not see it, he was thinking. Presently he said—

“It is difficult. Perhaps impossible, unless I should make you over again.” He glanced up with a yearningly explanatory and apologetic look in his eyes, and added, “For you are an animal, you see—you understand that?”

I could have slapped him for it, but I austerely held my peace, and answered with cutting indifference—

“Quite so. It happens to happen that all of us are that.”

Of course I was including him, but it wasⒶ only another waste—he didn't perceive the inclusion. He said, as one might whose way has been cleared of an embarrassing obstruction—

“Yes, that is just the trouble! It makes it ever so difficult. With my race it is different; we have no limits of any kind, we comprehend all things. You see, for your race there is such a thing as time—you cut it up and measure it; to your race there is a past, a present and a future—out of one and the same thing you make three; and to your race there is alsoⒶ such a thing as distance—and hang it, you measure that, too! . . . . . Let me see: if I could only . . . . if I . . . . oh, no, it is of no use—there is no such thing as enlightening that kind of a mind!” He turned upon me despair-

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ingly , pathetically, adding, “If it only had some capacity, some depth, or breadth, or—or—but you see it doesn't hold anything; one cannot pour the starred and shoreless expanses of the universe into a jug!”

I made no reply; I sat in frozen and insulted silence; I would not have said a word to save his life. But again he was not aware of what was happening—he was thinking. Presently he said—

“Well, it is so difficult! If I only had a starting-point, a basis to proceed from—but I can't find any. If—look here: can't you extinguish time? can't you comprehend eternity? can't you conceive of a thing like that—a thing with no beginning—a thing that always was? Try it!”

“Don't!Ⓐ I've tried it a hundred times,” I said, “It makes my brain whirl just to think of it!”

He was in despair again.

“Dear me—to think that there can be an ostensible Mind that cannot conceive of so simple a trifle as that! . . . . Look here, August: there are really no divisions of time—none at all. The past is always present when I want it—the real past, not an image of it; I can summon it, and there it is. The same with the future: I can summon it out of the unborn ages, and there it is, before my eyes, alive and real, not a fancy, an image, a creation of the imagination. Ah, these troublesome limitations of yours!—they hamper me. Your race cannot even conceive of something being made out of nothing—I am aware of it, your learned men and philosophers are always confessing it. They say there had to be something to start with—meaning a solid, a substance—to build the worldⒶ out of. Man, it is perfectly simple—it was built out of thought. Can'tⒶ you comprehend that?”

“No, I can't! Thought! There is no substance to thought; then how is a material thing going to be constructed out of it?”

“But August, I don't mean your kind of thought, I mean my kind, and the kind that the gods exercise.”

“Come, what is the difference? Isn't thought just thought, and all said?”

“No. A man originates nothing in his head, he merely observes

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exteriorⒶ things, and combines them in his head—puts several observed things together and draws a conclusion. His mind is merely a machine, that is all—an automatic one, and he has no control over it; it cannot conceive of a new thing, an original thing, it can only gather material from the outside and combine it into new forms and patterns. But it alwaysⒶ has to have the materials from the outsideⒶ, for it can't make them itself. That is to say, a man's mind cannot create—a god's can, and my race can. That is the difference.Ⓐ We need no contributedⒶ materials, we create them—out of thought. All things that exist were made out of thought—and out of nothing else.”

ItⒶ seemed to me charitable, also polite, to take him at his word and not require proof, and I said so. He was not offended. He only said—

“Your automatic mind has performed its function—its sole function—and without help from you. That is to say, it has listened, it has observed, it has put this and that together, and drawn a conclusion—the conclusion that my statement was a doubtful one. It is now privately beginning to wish for a test. Is that true?”Ⓐ

“Well, yes,” I said, “I won'tⒶ deny it, though for courtesy's sake I would have concealed it if I could have had my way.”

“Your mind is automatically suggesting that I offer a specificⒶ proof—that I create a dozen gold coins out of nothing; that is to say, out of thought. Open your hand—they are there.”

And so they were!Ⓐ I wondered; and yet I wasⒶ not very greatly astonished, for in my private heart I judged—and not for the first time—that he was using magic learned from the magician, and that he had no gifts in this line that did not come from that source. But was this so? I dearly wanted to ask this question, and I started to do it. But the words refused to leave my tongue,Ⓐ and I realized that he had applied that mysterious check which had so often shut off a question which I wanted to ask. He seemed to be musing. Presently he ejaculated—

“That poor old soul!”

It gave me a pang, and brought back the stake, the flames and the death-cry; and I said—

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“It was a shame and a pity that she wasn't rescued.”

“Why a pity?”

“Why? How can you ask,Ⓐ 44?”

“What would she have gained?”

“An extension of life, for instance; is that nothing?”

“Oh, there spoke the human! HeⒶ is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping outⒶ of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven.”Ⓐ

I was annoyed at my carelessness inⒶ giving him that chance. But I allowed it to stand at that, and said nothing; it could not help the matter to go into it further. Then, to get away from it I observed that there was at least one gain that the woman could have had if she had been saved: she might have entered heaven by a less cruel death.

“She isn't going there,” said 44, placidly.Ⓐ

It gave me a shock, and also it angered me, and I said with some heat—

“You seem to know a good deal about it—how do you know?”

He was not affected by my warmth, neither did he trouble to answer my question; he only said—

“The woman could have gained nothing worth considering—certainly nothing worth measuring by your curious methods. What are ten years, subtracted from ten billion years? It is the ten-thousandth part of a second—that is to say, it is nothing at all. Very well, she is in hell now, she will remain there forever. TenⒶ years subtracted from it wouldn't count. Her bodily painⒶ at the stake lasted six minutes—to save her from that would not have been worthwhile.Ⓐ That poor creatureⒶ is in hell; see for yourself!”

Before I could beg him to spare me, the red billows were sweeping by, and she was there among the lost.

The next moment the crimson sea was gone,Ⓐ with its evoker, and I was alone.Ⓐ