al of the lovely glowing woman-shapes. Their forms were soft and
seemed to become almost too perfectly what he most wished they would
become, even as he looked and his mind tried to find imperfection, he
found only perfection. It was opposite from earth-style love, where one
ignores imperfections to think about the better parts and points of the
loved one ... where love is a slow schooling in seeing only the finest
facets of one's chosen. Here, he could find no imperfections to ignore,
and he had only to imagine some perfection to see it before him.

McCarthy could not consciously know that the heavenly looks of these
lovely things was magic, but he had his suspicions, and was always
turning around quickly to catch one of them off guard and looking like
something other than the featured actress in an extravagant and
too-undressed musical comedy. But he never succeeded, and always when he
turned quickly he heard the far faint tinkle of bell-like laughter, and
that tinkle was somehow not a tinkle, but a deep melodious chime so far
away that it was broken into smaller sound by the echo.

"Somebody gets a big kick out of me," grinned McCarthy, and forgot about
it. They waited on him hand and foot; every whim that came into his mind
they gratified as soon as it was born. Food of the most exotic kind was
set before him whenever he was hungry. When he wanted love, they gave
him from a boundless store; though not love such as he knew about. It
was instead an ecstacy of an intense and vibrant kind, an overwhelming
flame that hovered always about the sweetly glowing bodies of them, a
flame that was not anything but the essence of all desires, distilled
and intensified by some strong but subtle magic.

But after a while it was his sleeping that McCarthy liked the most. For
then dreams came visibly into his chambers, and before his mind's eye
waved immense phantasmagorial adventures. When one of these adventures
caught his fancy it picked him up like a womanish whirlwind of strangely
soft dark arms and he became for the time of his sleep a God, to whom
all things were possible and each tiniest part of these dreams was like
a flower of unearthly and utterly exquisite beauty.

It was nearly a year by McCarthy's careless reckoning before he
determined what was true and what was mere pleasant fantasy in his life.

That was a black day.

He awoke to find his chambers empty. No glowing heavenly shapes to wash
him and dress him and c