st go now, and we shall not see
each other any more."

"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"

Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is
no other."

A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a
vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words
might be true--even must be true.

"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?"

"No. How could I? But if it can only be true--"

"It is true."

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before
it could issue in words, and I said, "But--but--we have seen that future
life--seen it in its actuality, and so--"

"It was a vision--it had no existence."

I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. "A
vision?--a vi--"

"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times
in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God--man--the world--the sun, the moon,
the wilderness of stars--a dream, all a dream; they have no existence.
Nothing exists save empty space--and you!"

"I!"

"And you are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but
a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream,
creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this,
then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the
nothingness out of which you made me....

"I am perishing already--I am failing--I am passing away. In a little
while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless
solitudes without friend or comrade forever--for you will remain a
thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable,
indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself
and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries,
ages, eons, ago!--for you have existed, companionless, through all the
eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that
your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction!
Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane--like
all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet
preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy,
yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter
life, yet stingily cut it s