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 caress him. No sweet laughter in his ears, and no light anywhere but what he made with his almost depleted hand flash.

Like a man bereft of reason he rushed away through the endless vaulted cavern halls, seeking, seeking his loved playmates, his glowing angel-shapes. And his heart seemed about to burst in his breast with the terrible sense of loss, like a man who has just lost his family ... and who thinks he will find them alive if he runs fast enough.

After an endless time of running and walking and 

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