proud of the honor."

"Well, I'm not!" But my protest was feeble, and after all, despite his
overbearing mannerisms, I knew van Manderpootz liked me, and I was
positive he would not have exposed me to any real danger. In the end I
found myself seated before the table facing the etched mirror.

"Put your face against the barrel," said van Manderpootz, indicating a
stove-pipe-like tube. "That's merely to cut off extraneous sights, so
that you can see only the mirror. Go ahead, I tell you! It's no more
than the barrel of a telescope or microscope."

I complied. "Now what?" I asked.

"What do you see?"

"My own face in the mirror."

"Of course. Now I start the reflector rotating." There was a faint whir,
and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with only a slightly blurred
image of myself. "Listen, now," continued van Manderpootz. "Here is what
you are to do. You will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance.
If you think of house, you will see, not an individual house, but your
ideal house, the house of all your dreams and desires. If you think of
a horse, you will see what your mind conceives as the perfect horse,
such a horse as dream and longing create. Do you understand? Have you
chosen a topic?"

"Yes." After all, I was only twenty-eight; the noun I had chosen
was--girl.

"Good," said the professor. "I turn on the current."

There was a blue radiance behind the mirror. My own face still stared
back at me from the spinning surface, but something was forming behind
it, building up, growing. I blinked; when I focused my eyes again, it
was--_she_ was--there.

Lord! I can't begin to describe her. I don't even know if I saw her
clearly the first time. It was like looking into another world and
seeing the embodiment of all longings, dreams, aspirations, and ideals.
It was so poignant a sensation that it crossed the borderline into pain.
It was--well, exquisite torture or agonized delight. It was at once
unbearable and irresistible.

But I gazed. I had to. There was a haunting familiarity about the
impossibly beautiful features. I had seen the face--somewhere--sometime.
In dreams? No; I realized suddenly what was the source of that
familiarity. This was no living woman, but a synthesis. Her nose was the
tiny, impudent one of Whimsy White at her loveliest moment; her lips
were the perfect bow of Tips Alva; her silvery eyes and dusky velvet
hair were those of Joan Caldwell. But the aggregate, the sum tota