eft the house in great
haste.

Marco turned and stood with his back against the door. The cat had
awakened and she was gazing at him with her green eyes. She began to
purr encouragingly. She really helped Marco to think. He was thinking
with all his might and trying to remember.

"What did she come for? She came for something," he said to himself.
"What did she say? I only heard part of it, because I was asleep. The
voice in the dream was part of it. The part I heard was, 'You will
have to search for it. I have not a moment.' And as she ran down the
passage, she called back, 'You are too good for the cellar. I like
you.'" He said the words over and over again and tried to recall
exactly how they had sounded, and also to recall the voice which had
seemed to be part of a dream but had been a real thing. Then he began
to try his favorite experiment. As he often tried the experiment of
commanding his mind to go to sleep, so he frequently experimented on
commanding it to work for him--to help him to remember, to understand,
and to argue about things clearly.

"Reason this out for me," he said to it now, quite naturally and
calmly. "Show me what it means."

What did she come for? It was certain that she was in too great a
hurry to be able, without a reason, to spare the time to come. What was
the reason? She had said she liked him. Then she came because she
liked him. If she liked him, she came to do something which was not
unfriendly. The only good thing she could do for him was something
which would help him to get out of the cellar. She had said twice that
he was too good for the cellar. If he had been awake, he would have
heard all she said and have understood what she wanted him to do or
meant to do for him. He must not stop even to think of that. The
first words he had heard--what had they been? They had been less clear
to him than her last because he had heard them only as he was
awakening. But he thought he was sure that they had been, "You will
have to search for it." Search for it. For what? He thought and
thought. What must he search for?

He sat down on the floor of the cellar and held his head in his hands,
pressing his eyes so hard that curious lights floated before them.

"Tell me! Tell me!" he said to that part of his being which the
Buddhist anchorite had said held all knowledge and could tell a man
everything if he called upon it in the right spirit.

And in a few minut