of her in time with greatly more
opportunity to think up responses, but she had the advantage over
him in natural wit and was hard to top.

They also played checkers, and he often had to retire apart and
read a chapter of a book on the art between moves, and even so
she often beat him; for native talent is likely to be a match for
accumulated lore and codified procedure.

But to Milly also he was unfaithful in his fashion, being now
interested (he no longer became enamored or entranced) in a Mrs.
Roberts, a great-grandmother who was his elder by at least fifty
years. He had read all the data extant on the attraction of the
old for the young, but he still could not explain his successive
attachments. He decided that these three examples were enough to
establish a universal law: that a woman is simply not afraid of a
ghost, though he touches her and is invisible, and writes her
notes without hands. It is possible that amorous spirits have
known this for a long time, but Charles Vincent had made the
discovery himself independently.

When enough knowledge is accumulated on any subject, the pattern
will sometimes emerge suddenly, like a form in a picture revealed
where before it was not seen. And when enough knowledge is
accumulated on all subjects, is there not a chance that a pattern
governing all subjects will emerge?

Charles Vincent was caught up in one last enthusiasm. On a long
vigil, as he consulted source after source and sorted them in his
mind, it seemed that the pattern was coming out clearly and
simply, for all its amazing complexity of detail.

"I know everything that they know in the pit, and I know a
secret that they do not know. I have not lost the race--I have won
it. I can defeat them at the point where they believe themselves
invulnerable. If controlled hereafter, we need at least not be
controlled by them. It is all falling together now. I have found
the final truth, and it is they who have lost the race. I hold
the key. I will now be able to enjoy the advantage without paying
the ultimate price of defeat and destruction, or of collaboration
with them.

"Now I have only to implement my knowledge, to publish the fact,
and one shadow at least will be lifted from mankind. I will do it
at once. Well, nearly at once. It is almost dawn in the normal
world. I will sit here a very little while and rest. Then I will
go out and begin to make contact with the proper persons for the
disposition of this th