"Oh--you mean, then, that there's nothing really the matter with me?" Hard as Karen was, she trembled as her awful tension eased. "That I was _supposed_ to act that way? And can I tell Kit, right away?" "No need. Your brother now knows that it was a passing phase; he shall know very shortly that it has passed. It is not that you were 'supposed' to act as you acted. You could not help it. Nor could your brother, nor I. From now on, however, you shall be completely the mistress of your own mind. Come fully, daughter Karen, into mine." She did so, and in a matter of time her "formal education" was complete. * * * * * "There is one thing that I don't quite understand--" she began, before she boarded her speedster. "Consider it, and I am sure that you will," Mentor assured her. "Explain it, whatever it is, to me." "QX--I'll try. It's about Fossten and Dad." Karen cogitated. "Fossten was, of course, an Eddorian--your making Dad believe him to be an insane Arisian was a masterpiece. I see, of course, how you did that--principally by making Fossten's 'real' shape exactly like the one he saw of you in Arisia. But his physical actions as Fossten--" "Go on, daughter. I am sure that your visualization will be sound." "While acting as Fossten he had to act as a Thralian would have acted," Kay decided with a rush. "He was watched everywhere he went, and knew it. To display his real power would have been disastrous. Just like you Arisians, they have to keep in the background to avoid setting up an inferiority complex that will ruin everything for them. Fossten's actions, then, were constrained. Just as they were when he was Gray Roger, so long ago--except that then he did make a point of unhuman longevity, deliberately to put an insoluble problem up to First-Lensman Samms and his men. Just as you--you _must_ have ... you _did_ coach Virgil Samms, Mentor, and some of you Arisians were there, as men!" "We were. We wrought briefly as men, and died as men. Up to the present moment, no one has ever been the wiser." "But you weren't Virgil Samms, please!" Kay almost begged. "Not that it would break me if you were, but even I would much rather you hadn't been." "No, none of us was Samms," Mentor assured her. "Nor Cleveland, nor Rodebush, nor Costigan, nor even Clio Marsden. We worked with--'coached,' as you express it--those persons and others from time to time in certain small matters, but we were at no time integral with any of them. One of us was, however, Dr. Bergenholm. The full inertialess space-drive became necessary at that time, and it would have been poor technique to have had either Rodebush or Cleveland develop so suddenly the ability to perfect the device as Bergenholm did perfect it."