went back to his old job as market reporter
on an undertaker's weekly.

"Oh, thank you so much," spoke the ugly old soul to Gud.

"For what?" asked Gud.

"For the beautiful sentiments of the picture," she replied.

"But that wasn't a picture," corrected Gud, "that was reality."

"What are you saying?" queried the old soul, "I was blind, you know, and
didn't hear very well either."

"Oh, nothing," said Gud. "I am glad you enjoyed it." For he saw that she
had taken reality for romance, which is a far more beautiful illusion
than taking romance for reality. So Gud went quietly on his way.

Chapter LVIII

And Gud overtook a thief who had stolen an ocean and loaded it into a
wagon which he had hitched to a star. The thief was making a poor
getaway, for the wagon was leaking badly and was dropping clues at every
step.

To avoid being drowned in the drippings, Gud turned into an unexplored
dimension, but before he could get his bearings he was run down by an
insane comet collector, who was madly chasing a comet that was buzzing
dangerously near an incandescent sun--so hot that its nearest molecules
were farther apart than the hearts of a bigamist's wives.

To avoid the net of the comet collector Gud hid himself in an ethereal
cavern. There he found a spiritual paleontologist at work reconstructing
extinct souls from the merest fossil fragments.

Gud picked up a tiny fragment and asked the paleontologist what manner
of soul it had been.

The paleontologist scrutinized it through his confounded monocle and
replied: "It is a bit of ectoplasm from the soul of a woman killed by
curiosity. She was forever asking her lovers, 'How much do you love
me?'"

The paleontologist now reached up to a geometrical plane and brought
down another small fossil. "Observe," said he, "the marking on this
other bit of petrified ectoplasm, and note how the two differ."

"Yes, I see," said Gud, "what is that one?"

"That," replied the paleontologist, "is a fragment of the aura of a
woman who wished to be loved for herself alone."

"It is very interesting," agreed Gud, "but tell me why those two
completed models on the nebulous shelf behind you look so
argumentative."

"Ah," said the paleontologist, "they are the pride of my collection,
being the reconstruction of two friendly enemies. One was the soul of a
deist and the other the soul of an atheist, and they argued and argued
through one eternity after another. They argued