Then, too, Gerald was not certain Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was real. Gerald remembered always, at the back of his mind, that frightful instant when he had removed his spectacles, to find the child had vanished. Gerald assured himself that the cause was a slight indigestion, and that the moment’s blur of vision came from a disordered stomach. But he was wholly careful not ever again to look at Theodorick except through the rose-colored spectacles which made visible the magics of Maya. He kept resolutely out of his full attention the fact that Theodorick might be an illusion which Maya had created. And he grew accustomed to that unusual milk-colored tongue, which showed like a white snake within the red moist little mouth whenever the child laughed. And Gerald sometimes wondered if Maya had over-ambitiously designed to make permanent this mere parenthesis in his career. She had attempted, to be sure, no magic such as that with which she had transformed his predecessors. No sorceress would dare, for that matter, thus to presume against a god.... Gerald knew that, instead, it was his Maya’s wholesome simplicity and the prosaic human comfort which he did get, after all, from living with this middle-aged and fault-finding and not in the least beautiful woman that had detained him, just for the while of this parenthesis in his career. He of course would pass on, to enter into his kingdom, by and by. And there was no conceivable hurry about it, now that his journeying to Antan was for every practical purpose finished, and now that whensoever he elected he might within the next half-hour or so be taking over the realm and all the powers of the Master Philologist. Meanwhile, though, Gerald would now and then wonder amusedly if his dear, stupid Maya could perhaps have struck upon the device of detaining him by not using any magic whatever: if she in secret flattered herself that this device was succeeding: and if she actually cherished the delusion that she was hoodwinking omniscient Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones? Anyhow, his life here very amiably contented him for the while. The local circles of sorcerers and wizards were pleasant enough, barring only that haunting memory as to how they used unchristened children. Gerald and Maya did not go out a great deal; but they were on friendly terms with the neighbors; they attended an occasional Sabbat; and they kept in touch generally with the affairs of Turoine. And for the rest, the little happenings of his home life temporarily contented the Lord of the Third Truth.