Chisholm stood aghast and watched the endless procession. On they came, one vile caricature after another. Nobody seemed to have forgotten him. He expected the specter furnished by Firrel to be bad. It was. Malice was not its creator, but sheer contempt. Chisholm had to turn his face when it clambered up onto the stage. The office girls' offering differed little from Maizie's except in intensity. The one held by Hardy was a cruel surprise. He had done so much for Hardy. But he had forgotten how he had made Hardy pay through the nose for favors. The greatest shocks were to follow. He steeled himself for whatever opinions those first two wives held, but the current one had done a devastating job of analysis. Even the demon whistled. Interspersed between the major blows were minor ones, and not always shadowy. Bootblacks, waiters, taxi drivers--on almost every casual contact he had left a mark. Out of the lot there was only one that was glowingly heroic. He could not refrain from asking the demon about it. The demon bent his insight onto the wraith and pronounced: "A girl you met once--a pick-up. You kissed her on the Drive that night, and then lost her phone number, you lucky dog." "Lucky?" "Yes. She never had a chance to know you better." Mr. Chisholm was glum. It wasn't right to be pilloried that way. They simply couldn't do that to him. To hell with what all those people thought. Who were they, anyhow? A lot of nitwit salesmen and office help, gold-diggers and climbers! He knew he was all right. He had got along. They were jealous and envious, that's what. He nudged the demon. "Hey," he called, "this is a democracy, ain't it? If these soreheads have a vote, so do I. Don't _I_ come in?" "Sure, sure. It ought to help a lot, too. All these figures are weighted, you have noticed, by degree of intimacy and one thing or another. Since you have probably thought more about yourself than anybody else has, even if you've been wrong most of the time, your opinion counts." Chisholm looked down at himself confidently, and then his confidence began to ooze. His own personality, it appeared, even when viewed from his own standpoint, was more nebulous than he thought. He had never taken himself apart with the critical fury employed by such persons as Maizie, his wives and some others. It looked as if the almost-finished monstrosity standing in the center of the stage was going to be the image handed down to posterity. "It's not fair," he wailed. "What do all those yapping people really know about me--motives, and all that? I never did anything I didn't think was right, I never--" "Neither did Nero," said the demon calmly, "nor Torquemada, nor your estimable contemporary, Hitler. Nevertheless, we cannot take an Ego at its own valuation. Not where others are involved." Chisholm took a shuddering look at the hideous thing that was the summation of all his world thought of him. It was intolerable. That, then, was the verdict the demon had spoken of.