I stand now so that the light falls upon him, and I can see his face better. He is a little taller than I, younger looking and sounder looking; he has missed an illness or so, and there is no scar over his eye. His training has been subtly finer than mine; he has made himself a better face than mine.... These things I might have counted upon. I can fancy he winces with a twinge of sympathetic understanding at my manifest inferiority. Indeed, I come, trailing clouds of earthly confusion and weakness; I bear upon me all the defects of my world. He wears, I see, that white tunic with the purple band that I have already begun to consider the proper Utopian clothing for grave men, and his face is clean shaven. We forget to speak at first in the intensity of our mutual inspection. When at last I do gain my voice it is to say something quite different from the fine, significant openings of my premeditated dialogues. "You have a pleasant room," I remark, and look about a little disconcerted because there is no fireplace for me to put my back against, or hearthrug to stand upon. He pushes me a chair, into which I plump, and we hang over an immensity of conversational possibilities. "I say," I plunge, "what do you think of me? You don't think I'm an impostor?" "Not now that I have seen you. No." "Am I so like you?" "Like me and your story--exactly." "You haven't any doubt left?" I ask. "Not in the least, since I saw you enter. You come from the world beyond Sirius, twin to this. Eh?" "And you don't want to know how I got here?" "I've ceased even to wonder how I got here," he says, with a laugh that echoes mine. He leans back in his chair, and I in mine, and the absurd parody of our attitude strikes us both. "Well?" we say, simultaneously, and laugh together. I will confess this meeting is more difficult even than I anticipated. Section 2 Our conversation at that first encounter would do very little to develop the Modern Utopia in my mind. Inevitably, it would be personal and emotional. He would tell me how he stood in his world, and I how I stood in mine. I should have to tell him things, I should have to explain things----. No, the conversation would contribute nothing to a modern Utopia. And so I leave it out. Section 3 But I should go back to my botanist in a state of emotional relaxation. At first I should not heed the fact that he, too, had been in some manner stirred. "I have seen him," I should say, needlessly, and seem to be on the verge of telling the untellable. Then I should fade off into: "It's the strangest thing." He would interrupt me with his own preoccupation. "You know," he would say, "I've seen someone." I should pause and look at him. "She is in this world," he says. "Who is in this world?" "Mary!" I have not heard her name before, but I understand, of course, at once. "I saw her," he explains. "Saw her?"