am sure we would have had a great deal of pleasure, and profit
too, in discussing your experiences. The subject is extremely--"

"Explain to me!" she cried. "You would not have dared to do
it! I do not know how brave you may be, but I know you would not
have had the courage to come here and tell me that you had taken
away my reason and my judgment, as you took them away from all
those people, and that you had made me a mere tool of your will--
glaring and panting with excitement at the wonderful things you
told me to see where nothing existed. I have nothing to say
about the others. They can speak for themselves if they ever
come to know what you did to them. I speak for myself. I stood
up with the rest of the people. I gazed with all my power, and
over and over again I asked myself if it could be possible that
anything was the matter with my eyes or my brain, and if I could
be the only person there who could not see the marvellous
spectacle that you were describing. But now I know that nothing
was real, not even the little pine table--not even the man!"

"Not even me!" exclaimed Loring. "Surely I was real enough!"

"On that stage, yes," she said. "But you there proved you
were not the Herbert Loring to whom I promised myself. He was an
unreal being. If he had existed he would not have been a man who
would have brought me to that public place, all ignorant of his
intentions, to cloud my perceptions, to subject my intellect to
his own, and make me believe a lie. If a man should treat me in
that way once he would treat me so at other times, and in other
ways, if he had the chance. You have treated me in the past as
to-day you treated those people who glared at the magic egg. In