rply. "So!" he snapped. "So you disregarded my advice! Forget her,
I said. Forget her because she doesn't exist."

"But--I can't! Once more, Professor--only once more!"

He shrugged, but his blue, metallic eyes were a little softer than
usual. After all, for some inconceivable reason, he likes me. "Well,
Dixon," he said, "you're of age and supposed to be of mature
intelligence. I tell you that this is a very stupid request, and van
Manderpootz always knows what he's talking about. If you want to stupefy
yourself with the opium of impossible dreams, go ahead. This is the last
chance you'll have, for tomorrow the idealizator of van Manderpootz goes
into the Bacon head of Isaak there. I shall shift the oscillators so
that the psychons, instead of becoming light quanta, emerge as an
electron flow--a current which will actuate Isaak's vocal apparatus and
come out as speech." He paused musingly. "Van Manderpootz will hear the
voice of the ideal. Of course Isaak can return only what psychons he
receives from the brain of the operator, but just as the image in the
mirror, the thoughts will have lost their human impress, and the words
will be those of an ideal." He perceived that I wasn't listening, I
suppose. "Go ahead, imbecile!" he grunted.

I did. The glory that I hungered after flamed slowly into being,
incredible in loveliness, and somehow, unbelievably, even more beautiful
than on that other occasion. I know why now; long afterwards, van
Manderpootz explained that the very fact that I had seen an ideal once
before had altered my ideal, raised it to a higher level. With that face
among my memories, my concept of perfection was different than it had
been.

So I gazed and hungered. Readily and instantly the being in the mirror
responded to my thoughts with smile and movement. When I thought of
love, her eyes blazed with such tenderness that it seemed as if--I--I,
Dixon Wells--were part of those pairs who had made the great romances of
the world, Heloise and Abelard, Tristram and Isolde, Aucassin and
Nicolette. It was like the thrust of a dagger to feel van Manderpootz
shaking me, to hear his gruff voice calling, "Out of it! Out of it!
Time's up."

I groaned and dropped my face on my hands. The Professor had been right,
of course; this insane repetition had only intensified an unfulfillable
longing, and had made a bad mess ten times as bad. Then I heard him
muttering behind me. "Strange!" he murmured. "In fact, fantastic