Oh. She's already married, eh?"

Well, I couldn't tell him she didn't exist. I couldn't say I was in love
with a vision, a dream, an ideal. He thought I was a little crazy,
anyway, so I just muttered "Yeah," and didn't argue when he said
gruffly: "Then you'll get over it. Take a vacation. Take _two_
vacations. You might as well for all the good you are around here."

I didn't leave New York; I lacked the energy. I just mooned around the
city for a while, avoiding my friends, and dreaming of the impossible
beauty of the face in the mirror. And by and by the longing to see that
vision of perfection once more began to become overpowering. I don't
suppose anyone except me can understand the lure of that memory; the
face, you see, had been my ideal, my concept of perfection. One sees
beautiful women here and there in the world; one falls in love, but
always, no matter how great their beauty or how deep one's love, they
fall short in some degree of the secret vision of the ideal. But not the
mirrored face; she was my ideal, and therefore, whatever imperfections
she might have had in the minds of others, in my eyes she had none.
None, that is, save the terrible one of being only an ideal, and
therefore unattainable--but that is a fault inherent in all perfection.

It was a matter of days before I yielded. Common sense told me it was
futile, even foolhardy, to gaze again on the vision of perfect
desirability. I fought against the hunger, but I fought hopelessly, and
was not at all surprised to find myself one evening rapping on van
Manderpootz's door in the University Club. He wasn't there; I'd been
hoping he wouldn't be, since it gave me an excuse to seek him in his
laboratory in the Physics Building, to which I would have dragged him
anyway.

There I found him, writing some sort of notations on the table that held
the idealizator. "Hello, Dixon," he said. "Did it ever occur to you that
the ideal university cannot exist? Naturally not since it must be
composed of perfect students and perfect educators, in which case the
former could have nothing to learn and the latter, therefore, nothing
to teach."

What interest had I in the perfect university and its inability to
exist? My whole being was desolate over the non-existence of another
ideal. "Professor," I said tensely, "may I use that--that thing of yours
again? I want to--uh--see something."

My voice must have disclosed the situation, for van Manderpootz looked
up sha