And the woman was very glad that she owned a sphinx: but the sphinx stared long into her eyes one day, and softly asked a riddle of the woman. And the woman could not answer, and she died. And the sphinx is silent again and none knows what she will do. THE REWARD One's spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day. Wandering once by night from a factory city I came to the edge of Hell. The place was foul with cinders and cast-off things, and jagged, half-buried things with shapeless edges, and there was a huge angel with a hammer building in plaster and steel. I wondered what he did in that dreadful place. I hesitated, then asked him what he was building. "We are adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the times." "Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out of a compromising age and a weakening country. The angel did not answer. "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will it?" I said. "Worse," said the angel. "How can you reconcile it with your conscience as a Minister of Grace," I said, "to inflict such a punishment?" (They talked like this in the city whence I had come and I could not avoid the habit of it.) "They have invented a new cheap yeast," said the angel. I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the angel was building, the words were written in flame, every fifteen seconds they changed their color, "Yeasto, the great new yeast, it builds up body and brain, and something more." "They shall look at it for ever," the angel said. "But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade," I said, "the law allowed it." The angel went on hammering into place the huge steel uprights. "You are very revengeful," I said. "Do you never rest from doing this terrible work?" "I rested one Christmas Day," the angel said, "and looked and saw little children dying of cancer. I shall go on now until the fires are lit." "It is very hard to prove," I said, "that the yeast is as bad as you think." "After all," I said, "they must live." And the angel made no answer but went on building his hell. THE TROUBLE IN LEAFY GREEN STREET She went to the idol-shop in Moleshill Street, where the old man mumbles, and said: "I want a god to worship when it is wet." The old man reminded her of the heavy penalties that rightly attach to idolatry and, when he had enumerated all, she answered him as was meet: "Give me a god to worship when it is wet." And he went to the back places of his shop and sought out and brought her a god. The same was carved of grey stone and wore a propitious look and was named, as the old man mumbled, The God of Rainy Cheerfulness. Now it may be that long confinement to the house affects adversely the liver, or these things may be of the soul, but certain it is that on a rainy day her spirits so far descended that those cheerful creatures came within sight of the Pit, and, having tried cigarettes to no good end, she bethought her of Moleshill Street and the mumbling man.