"But if the spark is there, glowing brightly, the little Ego lives. Grows in size. Displays a growing mental capacity of its own. Its own mental qualities make themselves known, to identify it as a man-child, or a woman-child. And the Ego, developing, brings it to individuality. It is Itself; unlike everyone else. The new Individual.... That, my friend Will, is a birth." Will thought a moment. "There is a beauty to it." Bee said, "I don't quite understand--" She gazed at Will, puzzled; and Will felt and understood her confusion. He said: "Your explanation, Thone, seems to make Man differ from Woman only in qualities of the Soul and Mind. You do not speak of the body; yet to me, Ala here appears of very different form from yourself." Thone smiled. "You say, 'to me.' You have answered yourself, my friend. The physical aspect of everything is but the reflected image of it within our own mentality. The gentleness of Ala--those qualities which make her what she is--are seen by you in the form of what you call a woman." "But," protested Will, "does she not look the same to you?" * * * * * "That I do not know," he returned earnestly. "Nor do you. We can only see, think, imagine for ourselves. Our conscious universe is our own; it exists of our own creation, and what it is of itself apart from us, I do not know." "We have on Earth," Will said, "a school of philosophical thinking which believes that nothing exists apart from the mentality perceiving it. Believes that without a consciousness of existence, nothing can exist." "That may be so," Thone replied gravely. Bee was still puzzled. She said to Thone, "Ala, to me, looks different from you. She looks, as Will says, like a girl. Won't you tell us how she looks to you?" He thought a moment. "She looks--like Ala," he said slowly. "I think we mould our images from the individual itself--not upon a generality of sex. She looks to me like Ala, as I know her to be. Very gentle. Very keen of reasoning. Very quick--" He smiled. "Yet not always so very logical. She looks like the Ala of my creation--mine and that other mentality whom you would call her mother--" His voice turned solemn, with a singular hush to it. "Her mother--who has long since gone into that realm of mystery." At other times they talked of practical subjects. Brutar's coming invasion of Earth; my own fate, since I still was missing, unheard from. And they talked of what could be done to overcome Brutar and his horde of followers. Thone, it seemed to Will, had accomplished very little. He had learned of Brutar's purpose; and of the establishment of his realm. Thone had sent--by the aid of the lolos plant--an adventurer into the Borderland who had seen Brutar and some of his cohorts experimenting with the Earth-state. Then Ala had gone into the Borderland; had met Will; had arranged to bring him, Bee and myself back to see her parent.