Johannes stood up, in confusion. The two winsome children encircled him. He scented the exquisite perfume of their luxuriant hair and their rich dress. He felt their warm breath, their soft hands. He was charmed, through and through--possessed by delightful emotions. The little girls caressed him while they, asked after the monkey, until the gently reproachful "Olga!--Frieda!" sounded again. Then they went and sat with Johannes on the sofa, one each side of him. The mother lighted a cigarette. "Now proceed with your talking," said she, "so that I can be learning a little." Then in English: "If you listen quietly, girls, and are not troublesome, you may stay here." Van Lieverlee had risen, put aside his Turkish pipe, grasped the lapel of his skirtless dinner coat with his left hand, and was gesticulating with the right, in front of Johannes and the countess. "I ought to explain to him who Windekind, Wisterik, or--What is his name? Wistarik?... and Pluizer, are, Mevrouw. You know, do you not, those characters in Johannes' life?" "I--I--do not recall them," said the lady, "but that is nothing--speak out. Do not mind me. I do not count. I am only a silly creature." "Ah! If people in general were similarly silly! Windekind, Wisterik, and Pluizer, then Johannes, are nothing other than "dewas," or elementals, materialized by a supreme effort of the will. They are personified, or rather impersonated, natural power--plasmatic appearances from the crystal-clear, elementary oneness. Windekind is harmonic poetry, or, rather, poetic harmony--the original dawning, or, rather, the dawning originality, of our planetary aboriginal consciousness. Wistarik, on the contrary, or Pluizer, is demoniacal antithesis--the eternally skeptical negation, or negative skepticism. They are like all ebb and flow, like the swinging pendulum, like winter and summer, eternally struggling with each other--continually destroying and forever reviving, the indispensable, mutually excluding, and yet again mutually complementing, first principles of dualistic monism, or of monistic dualism." "How interesting!" murmured the countess; and turning to Johannes, she asked very seriously: "And have you really met with these elementals?" "I--I believe I have," stammered Johannes. "But, Van Lieverlee, then he truly is a medium! Do you not think so?" "Of the second grade, Mevrouw, undoubtedly. Perhaps, with study and proper culture, he will attain the first rank." "But would it not be well for us to introduce him to the Pleiades?" And turning toward Johannes, she said affably: "We have a circle, you know, for the study of the higher sciences, and for the general improvement of our 'Karma.'" "An ideal society, with a social ideal," supplemented Van Lieverlee. That sounded very alluring to Johannes. Would Frieda and Olga belong to it also? he wondered. He said, however, as politely and modestly as possible: "But, Mevrouw, would I really be in place there?"