“Ah! Yes. I appreciate her very much. If I had my way I’d put her outside the gates, to go back as best she could, where she could. That is another peculiarity of his. If anybody else had played the trick on him that she did he would have followed him like the avenging angel to the end of time. But because she cries and frets and generally makes a disturbance every time she comes down here, he invariably gives in to her, and thinks it’s a laughing matter.” He looked over to me and smiled. “You should see her. She is very beautiful after a certain style. You would like her too, for till she becomes too ill to go about she is as merry as a bird, and as light.” “Can she retain that lightness even in hell?” I asked. “Why, yes. She is very deeply in love with him, so that there is nothing particularly saintly in it. And beyond that it pays her to be agreeable to him, because then she gets her own way at the end.” I laughed. “You certainly bring it down to a very matter-of-fact level,” I remarked. “Well, she was an arch-deceiver, but because she looked the other thing we were all taken in. However, she did not do much good with all her manœuvring, and I expected the next time she came down here she would have passed me by without a word.” “What had you done?” “Oh, nothing. But I was mistaken, she was no different from before. Since then she has come and gone; how much harm she does is not to be told, but, being a philosopher, I have come to take it quietly.” “Has she a good influence on you all, then?” “She has no influence on anyone except Vestasian—and not much on him. But the same applies to spirits as to mortals. No man should ever allow himself to be governed by a woman, not in the slightest. If so, she will drag him over the most perilous path he ever trod, whether to Heaven or Hell.” “What about Vestné?” “She neither drags me back nor pulls me forward. We walk evenly together, pace for pace.” “Have you many cities as grand as this?” I questioned, gazing out of the window and seeing, from where I sat, the turrets of many beautiful buildings without. “Oh, yes. Their name is legion, and they are all built on different principles. It is a pity that you refuse to take medicine. I think you would enjoy being here after a time.” “I had as lief pass away,” I asserted. “If I am to be other than myself I am the more content with a total dissolution.” “And Deborah?” “I cannot say,” I answered. “Being powerless, I am speechless.” “You should have taken my advice and left her long ago. Or you should have cultivated writing moral stories for young girls; it would have been amusing.” “I never appreciated young girls. If they are not moral without reading moral stories, they never will be.” “I think,” he said, after a pause, “I will write a biography of myself, it seems to be the fashion.” He jumped up and knocked the few ashes from the pipe into the fire. “Do you wish to walk through the city?” he queried lazily.