“Oh, I don’t know. Go and look at your own eyes in the glass—but I daresay you do often enough. Look here, Morris, you think me very silly—almost foolish—don’t you?” “I never thought anything of the sort. As a matter of fact, if you want to know, I think you a young woman rather more idle than most, and with a perfect passion for burying your talent in very white napkins.” “Well, it all comes to the same thing, for there isn’t much difference between fool-born and fool-manufactured. Sometimes I wake up, however, and have moments of wisdom—as when I made you hear that thing, you know, thereby proving that it is all right, only useless—haven’t I?” “I daresay; but come to the point.” “Don’t be in a hurry. It is rather hard to express myself. What I mean is that you had better give up staring.” “Staring? I never stared at you or anyone else, in my life!” “Stupid Morris! By staring I mean star-gazing, and by star-gazing I mean trying to get away from the earth—in your mind, you know.” Morris ran his fingers through his untidy hair and opened his lips to answer. “Don’t contradict me,” she interrupted in a full steady voice. “That’s what you are thinking of half the day, and dreaming about all the night.” “What’s that?” he ejaculated. “I don’t know,” she answered, with a sudden access of indifference. “Do you know yourself?” “I am waiting for instruction,” said Morris, sarcastically. “All right, then, I’ll try. I mean that you are not satisfied with this world and those of us who live here. You keep trying to fashion another—oh! yes, you have been at it from a boy, you see I have got a good memory, I remember all your ‘vision stories’—and then you try to imagine its inhabitants.” “Well,” said Morris, with the sullen air of a convicted criminal, “without admitting one word of this nonsense, what if I do?” “Only that you had better look out that you don’t _find_ whatever it is you seek. It’s a horrible mistake to be so spiritual, at least in that kind of way. You should eat and drink, and sleep ten hours as I do, and not go craving for vision till you can see, and praying for power until you can create.” “See! Create! Who? What?” “The inhabitant, or inhabitants. Just think, you may have been building her up all this time, imagination by imagination, and thought by thought. Then her day might come, and all that you have put out piecemeal will return at once. Yes, she may appear, and take you, and possess you, and lead you——” “She? Why she? and where?”