“Well, hear how he goes on: ‘It is thus slowly passing, with a slowness inconceivable in our measures of time, to new creative conditions, amid which the physical world, as we at present know it, will be represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from nonentity.’ ”

She listened with a glisten of amusement. All sorts of improper things suggested themselves. But she only said:

“What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means he ’s a physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!”