Gerald replied: “Your plaint is very moving. I regard a mirror which begets any such young fellows as a rather beautiful idea. It is true that I am a bachelor who therefore object to no reasonable mitigation of matrimony. But I am also a god, dear ladies, a god who brings all youth with me here in this vial.” At that the last wife spoke. Her hair was flaxen; her body was everywhere engagingly visible through her gown, of a transparent soft green tissue; she carried a small golden-hilted sword. And this wife said: “You differ, then, from those other gods who have passed this way. No youth went with these gods, who had themselves grown old and tired and more feeble, and who journeyed toward a resting from all miracles and away from a world wherein they were no longer worshipped.” “But I,” said Gerald, “I am a god who is, moreover, a citizen of the United States of America, wherein every sort of religion yet flourishes as it can never do in an effete and sophisticated monarchy. So do you show me the way to the temple of the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn!” 11. The Glass People THE seven wives conducted Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and the Preserver, to the Temple of the Mirror. It was the old wife who now lifted from the mirror a blue veil embroidered with tiny fig-leaves worked in gold thread. You saw then that this mirror was splotched and clouded and mildewed. It reflected sallowly a distorted and rather speckled Gerald: it glistened with an unwholesome iridescence. Thereafter Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, when he had announced his various titles, with such due ceremony as befits an exchange of amenities between divine powers, moistened his finger-tip with one drop of water from the Churning of the Ocean. Upon the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn he drew with his finger-tip the triangle of the male and of the female principle, so that the one interpenetrated the other: and he invoked Monachiel, Ruach, Achides, and Degaliel. Then there was never a more inconsequent rejoicing witnessed anywhere than was made by the seven wives of Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, now that the sacred mirror was altered, for these seven ungrateful scatter-brained women were now singing a sort of hymn in honor of the charitableness and the vigorous procreative powers of the sun. “But what under the sun has the sun,” said Gerald, a little flustered, “to do with the not inconsiderable favor which I have conferred upon this country? And do you think such anatomical details as you are singing about quite the proper theme for an opera?”