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addicted to lenses, telescopic and microscopic; the tower he lived in I would convert to a sort of huge
camera obscura
into which images of life outside were projected, ten times more luminous and interesting than the real thing—perfect, perfect! And my amateur of life would welcome and treasure his cancer, his admission-ticket to brotherhood …
    But even as my enthusiasm grew, Stoker Giles shook his head.
    “It’s wrong, classmate.” He even laid a hand on my arm—I can only say
lovingly
. And for all I saw pretty well he was playing to the hilt his role of clairvoyant, the touch moved me. And the laughing candor in those eyes, that exalted-imp’s face (doubtless practiced in a mirror)—the wretch had a way with him! My quick disappointment gave way to lassitude, a sweet fatigue. It
was
wrong, of course; all I’d ever done was wrong. I had no hold on things. My every purchase on reality—as artist, teacher, lover, citizen, husband, friend—all were bizarre and wrong, a procession of hoaxes perhaps impressive for a time but ultimately ruinous. He couldn’t know how deep his words went, almost to the wellsprings! Without for a moment accepting him as
prophet
(I knew all moods areretroactive, so that what he said would apply to anyone ripe for discontentment), I let myself acknowledge the mantic aspects of the situation. Throughout the rest of our interview, you must understand, there was this ambivalence: on the one hand I never lost sight of the likelihood that here was just another odd arts-student, even a lunatic, whose pronouncements were as generally pertinent as weighing-machine fortunes; on the other I was quite aware that it is the prophet who validates the prophecy, and not vice-versa—his authenticity lies not in what he says but in his manner and bearing, his every gesture, the whole embodiment of his personality. And in this salient respect (which I dwell upon because of its relevance to the manuscript he left me) Mr. Stoker Giles was effective indeed.
    Calmly now he said, “You’re like the man who gave my father a little lens once, that he claimed would show everything truly. Here it is …”
    He flipped up a round concave lens near the head of his walking-stick and invited me to examine my manuscript through it. But the joke was, it was silvered on the back, and returned no image of my words at all, enlarged or reduced, only a magnified reflection of my eye. I felt myself blush, and blushed more to feel it.
    He said, “You’re going to fail. You’ve never been really and truly
there
, have you? And you’ve never finally owned to the fact of things. If I should suddenly pinch you now and you woke and saw that all of it was gone, that none of the things and people you’d known had been actually
the case—
you wouldn’t be very much surprised.”
    Before I could reply he seized my arm and pinched the skin. I came out of the chair with a shout, batting at his hand, but could not shake him loose. “Wake up! Wake up!” he ordered, grinning at me. I found myself blinking and snorting out air. I did, I did with my whole heart yearn to shrug off the Dream and awake to an order of things—quite new and other! And it was not the first time.
    He let go my arm and with his cane-hook retrieved my chair, which had got thrust away.
    “It’s beside the point that all the others are flunking too,” he went on. “Don’t you agree? The important thing is to
pass;
you must pass. And you’ve got a long way to go! Don’t think it’s just a matter of turning a corner, to reach Commencement Gate: you’ve got to become as a kindergartener again, or a new-dropped kid. If that weren’t so, my dad wouldn’t have said it. But you know this yourself.” Again he touched my arm, this time mildly, where the angry pinch-mark flamed, and affection beamed in his look. “What a pleasing thing it is that you don’t bringup all the old arguments! But that’s the artist in you (which is real enough, even if