Pardon me, Miss O'Carroll; I do not take any interest in any person or thing on the face of the earth; which sentiment, if you analyse it, you will find to be the quintessence of the most refined philanthropy. MARIONETTA I will take it for granted that it is so, Mr Flosky; I am not conversant with metaphysical subtleties, but-- MR FLOSKY Subtleties! my dear Miss O'Carroll. I am sorry to find you participating in the vulgar error of the _reading public,_ to whom an unusual collocation of words, involving a juxtaposition of antiperistatical ideas, immediately suggests the notion of hyperoxysophistical paradoxology. MARIONETTA Indeed, Mr Flosky, it suggests no such notion to me. I have sought you for the purpose of obtaining information. MR FLOSKY _(shaking his head)_ No one ever sought me for such a purpose before. MARIONETTA I think, Mr Flosky--that is, I believe--that is, I fancy--that is, I imagine-- MR FLOSKY The [Greek: toytesti], the _id est_, the _cioe_, the _c'est a dire_, the _that is_, my dear Miss O'Carroll, is not applicable in this case--if you will permit me to take the liberty of saying so. Think is not synonymous with believe--for belief, in many most important particulars, results from the total absence, the absolute negation of thought, and is thereby the sane and orthodox condition of mind; and thought and belief are both essentially different from fancy, and fancy, again, is distinct from imagination. This distinction between fancy and imagination is one of the most abstruse and important points of metaphysics. I have written seven hundred pages of promise to elucidate it, which promise I shall keep as faithfully as the bank will its promise to pay. MARIONETTA I assure you, Mr Flosky, I care no more about metaphysics than I do about the bank; and, if you will condescend to talk to a simple girl in intelligible terms-- MR FLOSKY Say not condescend! Know you not that you talk to the most humble of men, to one who has buckled on the armour of sanctity, and clothed himself with humility as with a garment? MARIONETTA My cousin Scythrop has of late had an air of mystery about him, which gives me great uneasiness. MR FLOSKY That is strange: nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental psychology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery; it is 'such stuff as dreams are made of,' and is, indeed, stuff made of a dream; for, last night I fell asleep as usual over my book, and had a vision of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep; so that, having had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom. MARIONETTA