.
Oedipus--oedipus of the magazine covers and billboards."

I looked dully around. He was standing behind me, squinting, apparently,
into the spinning mirror beyond the end of the black tube. "Huh?" I
grunted wearily.

"That face," he said. "Very queer. You must have seen her features on a
hundred magazines, on a thousand billboards, on countless 'vision
broadcasts. The oedipus complex in a curious form."

"Eh? Could _you_ see her?"

"Of course!" he grunted. "Didn't I say a dozen times that the psychons
are transmuted to perfectly ordinary quanta of visible light? If you
could see her, why not I?"

"But--what about billboards and all?"

"That face," said the professor slowly. "It's somewhat idealized, of
course, and certain details are wrong. Her eyes aren't that pallid
silver-blue you imagined; they're green--sea-green, emerald colored."

"What the devil," I asked hoarsely, "are you talking about?"

"About the face in the mirror. It happens to be, Dixon, a close
approximation of the features of de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly!"

"You mean--she's real? She exists? She lives? She--"

"Wait a moment, Dixon. She's real enough, but in accordance with your
habit, you're a little late. About twenty-five years too late, I should
say. She must now be somewhere in the fifties--let's see--fifty-three, I
think. But during your very early childhood, you must have seen her face
pictured everywhere, de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly."

I could only gulp. That blow was devastating.

"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are implanted very
early. That's why you continually fall in love with girls who possess
one or another feature that reminds you of her, her hair, her nose, her
mouth, her eyes. Very simple, but rather curious."

"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Everytime I look into one of
your damned contraptions I find myself in love with a myth! A girl who's
dead, or married, or unreal, or turned into an old woman! Curious, eh?
Damned funny, isn't it?"

"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens, Dixon, that
she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles her mother. And what's
still more, she's arriving in New York next week to study American
letters at the University here. She writes, you see."

That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How--how do you know?" I
gasped.

It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness of van
Manderpootz ruffled. He re