I nodded, following his lips. "Once," he continued, "I drew her a little larger." From her perch on my kneecap Red said, coolly, "Don't you dare try _that_ again." "No, dear," Willy said, sadly. I rubbed my head. To Willy I said, "You can't--project her?" Willy started to answer, but Red interrupted. She looked piqued. "Of course he can't project me. That would be a distortion of myself. It wouldn't," she yawned, ruffling her red locks, "be me." I rubbed my head again. I couldn't think of anything to say. Willy shifted. "I can draw her smaller," he said. "But that would make it even worse, of course." I nodded. "Of course." Because it seemed practical to say it, I said it: "But wouldn't that be a distortion too?" "Of course not," Red said, and I had the fleeting impression of being faced by a school teacher in the minute end of a telescope. "Minimized elements are true elements, merely condensed. Maximized elements are bloated, therefore distorted." She sniffed. "Any figment knows that." I tossed it around in my floundering mind, but it still came out the way it sounded. There was another silence. I could see that the two of them were losing faith in my godmaternal fairyhood. So just to keep the conversation jogging, I tried another tack. To Willy I said: "If Red's a figment of your imagination, why didn't you imagine her a more practical size in the first place?" * * * * * Willy chewed on it for a couple minutes. Red turned away in disgust to leap from my kneecap to Willy's. She seated herself primly and began fussing with her infinitesimal nails. Willy said, "After all, she does have a mind of her own, Jim. She wanted to be imagined the size she is, so--" He looked at me and shrugged. "Why," demanded the little woman, "should I go up to him? Why can't he come down to me?" I was getting riled. "You love him, don't you?" She frowned. "He loves me, doesn't he?" This had a familiar feminine ring to it which balked pursuit of _that_ subject. I wouldn't have believed that Willy possessed such a dogmatic objective imagination. If _I_ wanted to conjure up a babe I'd make sure beforehand that she came out the way I whimmed her. Red had a mind of her own, which was the negative, or feminine, part of Willy's mind. All these thoughts popped up in my head because I had to keep this in a practical light to insure against a return of the shakes. If I started considering the _impractical_ side of it I'd recognize it in its true light, which was unmitigated madness. Willy and Red remained silent, inferring that I was to carry the ball. "What I'm dim about, Willy, is how this ties in with your professional livelihood. Why do you have to give up art?" "Isn't it obvious?"