laimed, "you promised me, my dear, that there
should be no ventilators in our new house." "Nor are there any," said
I; "but what makes you think that the stranger is a Woman? I see by my
power of Sight Recognition----" "Oh, I have no patience with your Sight
Recognition," replied she, "'Feeling is believing' and 'A Straight Line
to the touch is worth a Circle to the sight'"--two Proverbs, very
common with the Frailer Sex in Flatland.

"Well," said I, for I was afraid of irritating her, "if it must be so,
demand an introduction." Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife
advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam, to feel and be felt
by----" then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there
are no angles either, not a trace of one. Can it be that I have so
misbehaved to a perfect Circle?"

"I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle," replied the Voice, "and a
more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately,
I am many Circles in one." Then he added more mildly, "I have a
message, dear Madam, to your husband, which I must not deliver in your
presence; and, if you would suffer us to retire for a few minutes----"
But my Wife would not listen to the proposal that our august Visitor
should so incommode himself, and assuring the Circle that the hour of
her own retirement had long passed, with many reiterated apologies for
her recent indiscretion, she at last retreated to her apartment.

I glanced at the half-hour glass. The last sands had fallen. The
third Millennium had begun.

Section 16. How the Stranger vainly endeavoured to reveal to me
in words the mysteries of Spaceland

As soon as the sound of the Peace-cry of my departing Wife had died
away, I began to approach the Stranger with the intention of taking a
nearer view and of bidding him be seated: but his appearance struck me
dumb and motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptoms
of angularity he nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of
size and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the scope
of my experience. The thought flashed across me that I might have
before me a burglar or cut-throat, some monstrous Irregular Isosceles,
who, by feigning the voice of a Circle, had obtained admission somehow
into the house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle.

In a sitting-room, the absence of Fog (and the season happened to be
remarkably dry), m