A Little Knowledge

An Ironic Novelet by Judith Merril

"Mental Sciences" pop up every now and then; but suppose someone came forth with a spiel and a miraculous device which actually did what he claimed it would do!

ONE HUNDRED dollars. That was two months' rent on the apartment, or the mailing-address paid up for a full year...two half-page ads for Help Yourself, or twenty bottles of reasonably good brandy. Or one ad, and five bottles, and some books and something for Irene...

Harry Barchester pushed back his chair determinedly, and crossed the room to his wife's desk.

"Here." He handed her the neatly- typed letter and, more reluctantly, the scrawled check. "We'll have to send it back, of course; you know what to write."

Irene barely glanced at the check, but she read the letter through carefully. "I don't see why," she said. "Did you read this?" The clean, coved ivory-white tip of her fingernail pointed to the fourth line, and swept inclusively down the page to the end of the first paragraph:

...a small token of my appreciaton for what the Cell has already done for me. I trust you will be able to utilize this gift, small as it is, for further research and development of this amazing science. I cannot tell you how grateful...

He had already read it—not once, but too often. He shook his head. "There isn't any more research to be done on this thing, baby," he said unhappily, and added with an unexpected twinge of honesty: "At least, not anything that can be done for a hundred bucks. Look, we're making out. We're not rolling in dough, yet—I know that—but we're eating at least. We're paying the rent. This month," he smiled, "we can even pay the printer. Why take a chance on something like this?"

"He says development, too," Irene insisted. "We could take an extra ad, or send out a new mailing, or... anything. Anything that would reach more people. That's development, isn't it?" she finished triumphantly.

For one wavering moment he was tempted; it made sense the way she said it.

"A hundred dollars, Harry. We don't get that dropped in our laps every day!"

He couldn't possibly explain. "I wish we could keep it, baby," he said. "You could have a new dress, for once—and we could get out and see a show or something." Lesson One, Elementary Applied Psychology; subtitle: Keep 'em on the run! "We could have ourselves a time. It's all right for me to sit around here like this all the time; I don't mind it. But you're entitled to..."

"That's not what I meant!" she stopped him. "You know I didn't mean that. I just don't see what's wrong with using it the way he said..."

From the dubious vantage-point of twenty years of added age, Harry Bacchester looked down at his lovely wife, and made an urgent mental note of the stubborn set of her chin. Irene was beautiful, intelligent, and in love. Irene was young; she had years ahead of her in which to acquire the bitter lessons life had already offered him. But, right now, she was still inclined to be a trifle trusting about such unarguable realities as the underhanded methods of postal authorities, and the high cost of lawsuits. She still believed in ail the things Harry had lost faith in...

"Look," she urged, "Why don't you wait till tomorrow? Just think it over..."

"I am thinking baby," he said firmly; "that's why we have to send it back. There just isn't any way to rush things, Irene. We've got a good thing here. All right, it's not shaking the world yet, but it takes time. And it's building; it's building all the time, you know that. Hell, I don't blame you for getting impatient. You're young and ... there's no sense talking about the things I'd like to do for you. I can't, not yet. But give me a few years' time, that's all..."

THE ARGUMENT was as good as won; she was already reaching for a fresh letterhead. He drove the point home, hating himself for the facility with which the words came to his lips: "Remember, we worked this out beforehand—together. It's been working out that way. All you need now is patience. I know; I used to think I could get-rich-quick, too—but it just doesn't work, baby. You can't do it..."

"He did." She slapped the letter down on the desk, sandwiched a slice of carbon paper between the fresh letterhead and a second-sheet, rolled the layers professionally into her typewriter.

HELP YOURSELF, INC.

The Institute For Psychological Science

President: Harcourt Barchester, L.E., M.C.B., R.S. Secretary: Irene Kardin

The lettering was shiny black on the crisp white paper. Harry stared at it, watched it blur in movement as her lingers began rattling the keys of the typewriter. He touched a kiss lightly to the top of Secretary Kardin's head, and was rewarded by a brief upturned smile.

"Just the same, she said over the clatter, "He did it."

"If he did," Harry assured her, "that letter means more to us than any hundred dollars. He started back to his own desk, and turned thoughtfully to add: "Don't forget to ask for a picture, baby—and permission to quote."

"Right."

Back at his own desk, Harry sat for minutes without making any move toward the small pile of mail that still waited for his attention. Then, abruptly, he took a large sheet of layout paper from a drawer, and ruled a precise rectangle in the top center. Over the empty space he sketched in bold capitals: HE DID IT!

Below the space reserved for the photograph, he lettered rapidly: He did it for himself. Can you do it too? Then a highly-satisfactory, remembered passage from the letter; and underneath, the standard patter.

Do you want to find a glowing new personality? Do you want to gain influence over your friends and surroundings? Would you like to be better at your job? "Do you want to make the most of yourself?" he demanded, in italics, at the bottom. "And have you got what it takes to do the job alone? If you can answer `Yes!' to all these questions, then you must read the exciting new book by Harcourt Barchester, L.E., M.C.B., R.S.,

Self-Synthesis, a Real Mental Science.

No misleading statements; no exaggerated claims. Do it all in questions. It was tricky, but by now routine; Harry could have done it in his sleep. He surveyed the draft with satisfaction. There'd never been a word in any ad of his that they could question; there was nothing out of line in the book or the blueprints, either. Perfectly innocuous, all of it. All they had to do was keep on selling the stuff, straight. No need to stick your neck out for a lousy hundred bucks...

WHEN THE second letter from James Serkin came, Harry sat for a long time reading it over, studying the glossy photograph, and examining the check—this time for $250.00. In the end, he put the whole collection into his pocket without mentioning it to Irene. Later, when she went out to the postoffice, he sat down at the typewriter himself, and composed a careful answer to go back with the check. Then he dug out the rough copy of the ad he had written two weeks earlier, and made a fresh neat layout, typing the body of the copy clearly below the picture.

Waiting for Irene to get back, he studied the photograph curiously. It was an unexpectedly appealing portrait. Nothing really unusual about the face—even-featured, pleasant, youthful, strongly masculine. But none of that accounted for the compellingly likeable quality of the picture. The man's expression was suffused with a quiet unquenchable confidence that somehow did not offend, but made you look back, and look again.

Harry looked once more; it was possible, after all, that Serkin was on the level. There was no, reason, after ell, why Self-Synthesis shouldn't work. If the subject had some ability to start with; if he was—like this man —personable, attractive; if nothing but lack of confidence was holding him back... Self-Synthesis, basically, was founded on good solid psychology. The very achievement of constructing a Sure-Self Cell, of building from a blueprint, could give such a man all the assurance he needed. For that matter, just reading the book might do it. The more he looked at that photograph, the more convinced Harry was that in this case, at least, the system had worked. Faith-healing! he told himself contemptuously, and then thought the same thing again, more reflectively. Maybe...

For the last time, he decided it was really necessary to return the check, and told himself—as he had told Irene the first time—that the check itself didn't matter. If the man's photograph had half the effect on magazine readers that it had on him, Harry wouldn't be able to fill the orders it brought in. Which left him with just one problem...how to avoid showing Irene the letter that came with the photograph. He knew well enough that, this time, he would be entirely unable to convince her of the necessity for refusing the money; and he was sorely tempted himself, he was afraid that—in an open argument—she might convince him.

 HE CAME in from outside and brought the sun and air in with her. After a year and more, it still hit Harry with fresh surprise that she was so good to look at. Now she threw off her heavy black coat, and from inside the shapeless winterwear there emerged—a revelation just for him—the perfect slender- curves of her body, draped today in rosy wool. Soft, warm springy fabric, a dress on a hanger in the closet, but now an intimate integral part of Irene.

"It's wonderful out," she said, a little breathless still. "You ought to get out for a while." The wind had brightened the color in her face, almost to match the shade of her dress; and it had tossed the fringes of her hair into a thousand individual tendril-curls. She pulled a small black cap off her head, further disarranging her hair, and then, conscious of his eyes following her, made a small face and said, "I know, I'm a wreck."

"On you it looks good." She came over to kiss him, rumpled his scanty hair with a cold hand, and went out to the hall mirror to comb her own. I'm on my way out as a matter of fact," le called after her. "Just waiting for you; I wanted to show you something." He dropped the ad-layout on her desk as she turned back into the room. "Pretty windy out?" he asked. .

"Hats all over the place," she laughed. "I counted seventeen of them on Fifty-fourth Street alone. And I almost took off, crossing Columbus Circle. The wind got caught in my coat, and I had to grab a lamp-post to keep my feet on the ground..." She trailed off, and Harry glanced in to see that she was picking up the ad. He turned back again to the hall-mirror, and as quickly away from it, refusing the contrast between the balding middle-age he found there, and the glowing girl in the other room. Just a little stiffly, he retrieved her coat from the chair where she'd dropped it, and put it neatly in place in the closet.

"Harry! This is wonderful!" She rattled the stiff paper with pleasure, and read it again. "It's the best one yet. It's really good."

"You just think that because you wrote it," he teased her.

"I wrote...? Oh, I never even realized!" She looked up into his amused eyes, and protested happily: "Honestly, I didn't. I forgot all about that. Anyhow, that's only part of it. It's the letter and everything ...when did the picture come? Today?"

"Hm-hmm—want to see the letter? It wasn't as good as the first one, but he sure does like us."

"Where is it? Wait a minute, I'll get an envelope for this."

Harry went back to his desk, and started fumbling through the papers spread over the top, still smiling with an inner amusement that had little relation to Irene's pleasure at seeing her own words headline the new ad. He continued the inept hunt through his scattered papers all the time that she found an envelope, started to insert the layout, and pulled it, out again—and once more—for a last look. Then he kept it up, muttering furiously in his determination to find the letter, until she herself stopped him.

"It can wait," she laughed fondly. "The printer won't. They close at five, remember?" She almost pushed him out of the door.

By the time he was done at the printer's, and had mailed his letter, the last sun was gone, and the day had turned grey: the dull grey of early March, when winter is over and spring has not yet begun. Momentarily, the wind failed, and all around him the city-smells of smoke and soot and gas reasserted themselves. It fitted his mood: in his mouth was the flat flavor of one cigarette too many; and farther back inside him was the old bitter taste of stale laughter.

IT WAS almost too easy, handling Irene. All he had to do was to treat her like any other human being. What worked on one would work on all, no matter how smart they were or how beautiful; no matter what age or sex, or where they came from or what they did—or how much you loved them. He had learned that, just a little too late. Now he knew it, thoroughly, and hated the knowledge. There ought to be some way to live honestly with Irene, to be—genuine all the time. Perhaps there was... but not in this life.

Life was a game, at first; then he found out it was only a joke after all. Later, he learned that the joke was on him, and life became a farce. A farce that had somehow acquired—as leading lady—a lovely woman who should, by every rule of the game, have been cast as the heroine of somebody else's melodrama.

Irene...if there had been an Irene twenty years earlier...

If there had been one, he wouldn't have known it, wouldn't have cared. He'd have noticed; perhaps, the golden glints in her hair, and the warm curve of her smile; he would have watched, certainly, the slow swing of her thigh from hip to knee when she walked. He would have wanted her, might have had her. But he'd never have known, really, that she was there. She was too healthy; too solid and simple; too easy to comprehend.

That was when life was a game; they called it "Student of Psychology". Those were years of learning and discovery. He was an adventurer into the dim, untracked interior of the human mind and soul. One by one, he sought, found, and experienced... Each new piece of knowledge was not only a triumph of its own, but was a vital clue as well, luring him to more exciting, conquests.

Then, abruptly, the game was won. He picked up the last prepared piece of knowledge, and collected the prefabricated degrees whose letters were supposed to spell victory. That was when, in his own growing maturity, he was first aware of the poverty of the prize he'd won...

Still, there were joyous years that followed: years of creative thought and continual effort; of hard work and poverty; strenuous enjoyment, and honest laughter. He went beyond, the boundaries of the game; charted new courses for his thinking; explored far and away beyond, a dozen devious routes into other peoples' thoughts.

Until he found out that he knew more than others wanted him to know; and more than they were willing to learn themselves. Teachers, mentors, follow-students who had admired his brilliance, worshipped his quick grasp of knowledge, had only derision for his original work. Derision—and then hatred, too, for his stubborn insistence...

He faced them—and fought them—with the full exuberant strength of his young manhood—hampered only by the hangover of respect for his opponents that still remained from his student days. He fought fairly, expecting honesty to come forward and meet his own. After a while, he was too tired to fight any more…

HE MET Irene at a poker-game, almost fifteen years later. That was after he got tired of teaching in second-rate schools, and had faced the fact that he didn't have the moral toughness for the big con—after fortune-telling and mind-reading had both palled on him; after he decided he didn't like the big city any more, and gave up his job as a professional chess-player in an amusement arcade.

He took up week-ending and made out moderately well as a peripatetic houseguest and first class poker-player. He never cheated; he didn't have to. You stay in any game long enough, and after awhile the rest of them give themselves away with their chin-scratchings, and cigarette-tappings, and compulsive jokes. He made money—and he gave full value in entertaining conversation.

He won Irene—won her away from younger, handsomer, and wealthier men, by exercising every psychological skill at his command. He watched her, during the poker-game and after it, with a knowledgeable eye and a sure instinct.

But even while he used his mental lures to ensnare her, even as he exulted in the impossible victory he was winning, he began to despise himself—for the first time consciously—as a charlatan, a fraud. He had nothing to offer but deceptions; and Irene was the one living person he did not want to deceive.

He won her interest; her respect; and at last her love by dazzling her with his display of understanding and perception; by evidencing the perfect tender response to her every mood and attitude. He dug up all the half-forgotten great truths of his earlier, happier years, and arrayed them all for her amusement. One after another, he showed her the despised creations of his youth—and among them the Sure-Self Cell.

THE CELL, as nearly as he could recall, was the product of a happy evening during the student years. He was rooming, at the time, with a promising young electrical engineer—a man as brilliant as himself in those days, and now as obscure. Together, they had worked out the blueprint for a super-self-help-gadget, killing two bottles in the process.

Harry found the blueprint when he was leafing through old files and took it to Irene, for laughs. He explained the whole thing to her with deadpan sobriety, showed her the meticulous plans made so it would be possible for an absolutely unskilled individual to build the sounding-board cabinet and install the complex, automatic electronic equipment. He expounded learnedly the theory of Self-Synthesis—patched up out of a dozen reasonably-harmless psychological devices, with a few of his own pet notions out of the old days thrown in for good measure.

He tapped at the blueprint with a nervous pencil, tracing the structure of each device. The flashing lamp that induced light auto-hypnosis. The recorder that played back questions previously set by the user, as soon as the relaxed trance position caused a limp finger to fall on a sensitive pushbutton. The ingenious mechanism that switched the machine from play-back to recording as soon as the patient's voice hit the sounding board. The lie-detector circuit that cut off the recorder again, shortly after the patient's pulse-beat indicated a peak of excitement. The electric massage that stimulated circulation and consciousness simultaneously, inducing a rare sense of well-being as the user came out of trance and heard his confessions played back to him.

All these, and half a dozen more equally-ingenious devices were built into the Cell—some of them the products of such esoteric thinking that Harry himself could no longer remember exactly how they worked, or why.

He gave it to her dead-pan, anticipating her amusement—and she was not amused. At first, he was aware only of disappointment in her for failing to understand that it was all a tremendous hoax; then he caught some of her enthusiam. And before he went home that evening, Harry had realized that here was a last opportunity to salvage something for himself. With the Cell he could free himself from the endless rounds of weekends, and from dingy boarding house rooms alike. He could make money—and he could have Irene...

It took him exactly one month of inspired labor to produce the book, Self-Synthesis, that would go with the Cell. Another month of ardent, all-night talks with Irene produced a plan of operation—and a wedding-date as well. Through that whole hectic time, his only real problem was to prevent her from building a Cell herself. He tried to convince her that it simply wasn't necessary; she was already so well-balanced, so well-integrated, that she couldn't benefit by it.

When she argued that she wanted to do it experimentally, as he had, (at which he had the grace to avert his eyes) there was nothing more he could say. But it took all his skill just to postpone it until, in the rush of events, it was no longer discussed.

Now, for more than a year, he had devoted himself to the increasingly-complicated business of keeping her faith alive. And day by day, as the deception grew harder and more repulsive to him, Harry needed Irene more.

HE DAY the third letter came, he was out, fulfilling one of his rare lecture-engagements. What he would have done had he opened it himself he never knew. As it was, Irene handed him the letter when he walked in, and stood waiting silently while he read it.

Dear Mr. Barchester:

A few months back, I should greatly have admired what would then have appeared to me to be your "high-minded principles." Since achieving synthesis in the Sure-Self Cell, however, I find it very difficult to comprehend the motivation that compels you to refuse my gifts. Your book is so eloquent on the subject of Relaxed Acceptance, and your axioms on the Least Resistance Principle are so appropriate and useful, that I confess your attitude confuses me.

However, since I can only conclude that your action is motivated by special considerations outside my knowledge, I should like to suggest the following arrangement:

Will you ship me fifty copies of your book, and forty copies of the Sure-Self Cell blueprints—along with a letter authorizing me, as your agent, to resell these items, and to publicize and advertise them? A check for the full retail price, $500, is enclosed with this letter.

Let me make clear that I have no desire to profit on the resale of these items. I am interested only in bringing the benefits of your scientific discoveries to as many others as possible. My own recent successes, since achieving synthesis in the Cell, have placed at my command sufficient resources to enable me to expend the necessary time and money for this purpose.

I hope this arrangement will overcome whatever objections you may have had to my previous offers.

Very truly yours,

James Serkin.

"Well?" she asked. "What are you going to do?"

There was an edge to her voice, and that was all he really needed. He wished he had more time to figure it, but... five hundred dollars. And Irene's impatient eyes.

"I'm going to ship him the stuff, baby." She smiled at him, and they both relaxed. "This time it's all right," he told them both; "this time it's a business deal."

HE GOT the books and blueprints off the next day, with a letter making James Serkin his agent and distributor. The five hundred he allocated carefully: a years' rental on the mail-drop, and two months on the apartment; two full-page ads they couldn't otherwise afford; a few small bills. The rest—roughly a hundred and fifty—he gave Irene to do with as she liked. Irrationally, almost superstitiously, he worried less about taking the money because he used none of it for personal pleasures... not for books or brandy.

It meant a lot to Irene. She got in the habit of breaking away from her desk for at least an hour or two every day, and came back each time with long happy stories of her adventures in the stores and through the streets of New York. Harry would have thought she could spend ten times the money she had in the number of hours she spent shopping, but she seldom actually bought anything. She seemed to enjoy having the money so much that she was reluctant to spend it; most of the time, she just went around looking at things.

The whole thing was good for Harry too. It took off some financial pressure, of course, and seeing Irene so happy would have been enough for him all by itself. But there was a bonus in self-confidence and reassurance that probably meant more than anything else.

After reading Serkin's letters over and over again, twisting every possible shade of meaning out of them, and returning repeatedly to a study of that fascinating photograph, Harry found it virtually impossible to believe that the man could be a postal agent or investigator of any sort. And, if you once admitted that the man was honest, it could mean only one thing: he had really, conclusively benefited through the use of the Sure-Self Cell. With all its fancy trimmings, Help Yourself could do some good, and Serkin was the proof.

Harry got to work with fresh interest on a new revised edition of Self-Synthesis, stressing every little angle that would help to build up self-confidence in the reader. And, with the same thought in mind, he put a new emphasis into the wording of the two extra ads:

"Self-expression instead of confession; constructive synthesis instead of analysis... Confidence is the key to success; understanding is the only way to mental relaxation..."

Actually, though neither of them put as much time into the routine work of the business as they had formerly done, they both seemed to accomplish a lot more. Confidence and relaxation ...they were key words after all.

For the first time since the day he showed Irene the blueprint of the Cell, Harry admitted to himself how much the tensions and anxieties of his chosen way of life were impairing his abilities. And for the first time, too, he began to hope: perhaps, some way, the snowballing deceptions could be brought to a halt. All he had to do was find what element of the system...

The fourth letter from James Serkin did not enclose a cheek. Instead, it was a bulky envelope filled with glossy-paper proofs and layouts for an advertising-campaign whose expense Harry could not even estimate. There were plans for magazine ads, and other plans for a giant-sized mailing. And the obvious costliness of the program was equalled only by its boldness.

With all his suspicions fully reawakened, Harry took a blue pencil to the ad copy, and sent it back posthaste—along with a lengthy and detailed letter about the sort of claims he felt could be made for the book and for the Cell. He expected another squabble with Irene when he showed her the deletions and changes in the copy, but, surprisingly, she made no demur. He waited, still worried, till he got Serkin's reply, and then he had to admit to himself once again the power of a confident mind. The telegram from Help Yourself's mid-western agent said only, meekly, Letter received and contents noted. Will mail you revised proofs.

Still another letter, the following day, made no reference to the ad campaign; this was completely taken up with Serkin's scheme for Harry to embark on a lecture career. Only once did it refer, very delicately, to the financial advantages. For the rest, the new agent presented most convincingly a number of arguments in favor of the kind of publicity that might accrue to Help Yourself, Inc. as the result of such a tour. Dr. Barchester, he insisted with the happy faith of a firm disciple, could not help being a great success on the platform. In any case, Serkin concluded, he had already taken the liberty, of getting in touch with a lecture-agent, who would shortly contact Barchester himself.

HARRY read the letter, laughed, and filed it away. To Irene, who couldn't understand his amused indifference, he explained that their new convert had apparently confused cause with effect; it was publicity that made lecture-engagements possible, not the other way around. He did not add that years of speechifying before self-help groups, and adult Study-clubs, had made him all too well aware of his own limitations as a lecturer.

He was still hesitant, but less inclined to laugh, when the agent called and waxed persuasive. Harry stalled and tried to decline; but in the end, under the agent's baffling insistence, he agreed to a trial-run of three local engagements.

After the first one, he had to admit that he had once again underestimated himself. Speaking to a roomful of avidly-interested, middle-aged ladies turned out to be far more pleasant than trying to do the principles of psychology into a class full of disinterested adolescents—and certainly far more successful than expounding esoteric points in a rented clubroom to a handful of hopeless men. Possibly, too, it was just the difference in self-confidence cropping up again. Irene's faith in him; Serkin's firm belief; and the backing of the lecture bureau, may all have affected the outcome of the speech.

Whatever the cause, he was no longer surprised when the local engagements were followed swiftly by an offer of a really choice series of lectures—at a good price—for a group of women's clubs in small towns a few hundred miles away.

Still, he hesitated; he couldn't leave the office empty, and he didn't want to leave Irene behind. They had never been separated since their marriage.

He spoke to her about it, and she was almost angry at him. "For heavens' sake, Harry, you can't pass this up," she said indignantly. "It's only four days. I'm a big girl now, remember? I can get along all right."

"Of course you can," he said automatically, but with little conviction. "It's just that I hate to leave you, that's all. I don't know if I can get along."

"Well, you'll just have to." She smiled, and made her special loving little face at him. "Go ahead and call the man back ... or do you want to have your secretary do it for you?"

"Baby, are you sure you'll be OK?" he asked again at the last minute, still ready to put down his bag, take off his coat, and call the whole thing off.

"Yes, I'm sure," she said impatiently. "Now go on, you big oaf—get out of here before you miss your train!' She walked downstairs with him, and waved goodbye as the cab rolled off.

Inside it, Harry suppressed a sudden and unreasonable wave of wild suspicion. Why was she so willing to let him go? Then he reminded himself that she was only looking out for his interests. And it was just for four days, after all.

The trip was a sensational success. With new fervor, Harry discussed the solid old principles of Confidence through Understanding, and Success through Confidence. "Know yourself, and you can kid the whole world," was his private formulation; he used somewhat subtler language for the ladies.

Toward the end of the speech, always, he would make a few discreet references to the miraculous properties of the Sure-Self Cell... nothing definite, nothing too specific. Then he would return briefly to the major theme, and finish with a thunderous injunction right out of the brochure:

Expression, not confession! Synthesis, not analysis!

The slogan hit straight at the best potential customers, those who had already had their dabblings with sympathetic clergymen, and soft-voiced psychiatrists; and who were ready, now, for something new. After each meeting there were a few who gathered about the platform, prying for further information about the Cell. Harry discovered, with no great surprise, that women who had spent a lifetime prodding their husbands into making enough money, so that they never had to do anything for themselves, were fascinated at the prospect of curing their mental ills by building from a blueprint.

He came home with a sheaf of orders for books and blueprints; several tentative engagements for repeat lectures; and the conviction that he'd been placing his ads in the wrong magazines. Apparently the ladies were more anxious to influence their friends and families than the men, were to succeed in the larger world. He'd have to give some thought to a new kind of ad.

RENE WASN'T in the apartment, but a note on his desk said she'd be back by two o'clock. There was more than an hour to wait; he put in some time compiling an impressive list, for her benefit, of the orders he had taken en route. Then he got to work on a rough draft of an ad for the women's magazines.

He was too restless to work; he couldn't concentrate.

He tried to estimate the possible extent of future orders stemming from the lecture tour, and jotted some figures down on paper—to see if there was any chance that the eager ladies themselves would contribute enough cash to the kitty to pay for an ad in a higher-priced medium.

It was two o'clock then, and she still wasn't back. Harry got up and wandered around the room, always winding up somehow at Irene's desk. He sharpened some pencils, and picked up the plastic paperweight he'd given her some months ago; studied for the thousandth time the intricate flower carved inside, and put it down again; wandered off and back; and noticed at last, on the corner of the desk, a familiar large envelope with Serkin's return address.

It had already been opened. Harry pulled out a sheaf of folded glossy papers—the revised ad proofs. He smoothed them out on the desktop for examination, meanwhile mentally composing a letter to his over-earnest disciple on the subject of the untapped women's market. If Serkin was determined to spend fantastic sums of money on Help Yourself, Harry could now provide him with something worth spending it on.

He spread out the unfolded sheets and stared at them in total disbelief.

They were revised, yes—but certainly not to conform to his own suggestions. If anything, the changes made were all in the opposite direction. Harry felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he read the outrageous list of things Serkin had promised the Cell would do.

These things had to be stopped before they appeared in print; they simply had to be stopped.

He was at his own desk, scribbling out an emphatic telegram to Serkin, when he heard Irene's key in the door. He jumped up, the proofs in his hand, and it occurred to him for the first time that she might already have taken care of the matter. Then, disturbingly, he realized she was not alone. From the entry hall he heard two voices: hers and another, deep, modious, and masculine.

Harry dropped the proofs back on his desk, and started for the door in irrational panic. He shouldn't have left her alone; he knew he shouldn't.

SHE ENTERED the room just as he approached the hall, and they nearly collided. Not a very effective greeting; he backed off, and ignoring her companion, let his eyes feast on Irene herself. He had missed her, these four days, had been building up her image in his own mind. But he was certain, as he looked at her, that she had never before been so beautiful as she was now.

Then she spoke, and he was stunned by the power her voice had over him. "Darling!" It was a greeting and caress all at once. "You didn't let me know when you'd be coming in," she accused. "You found my note, didn't you? We rushed back...oh! This is Mr. Serkin, Harry. He came in town yesterday... about those ads, you know."

"Mr. Serkin?" Harry mumbled, completely unable to tear his eyes from his wife's shining face, even as he remembered those ads.

"'How do you do, Dr. Barchester? It's a pleasure to meet you. A hand reached past Irene and gripped his own; his attention was torn from the woman's face to the man's. He looked over Irene's shoulder, remembering the compelling charm of Serkin's photograph, and trying for a clearer view of the man himself. Instead, in the mirror behind both of them, he saw himself; middle-aged, a little soft, and irrevocably balding.

Ardently, Harry tried to dislike James Serkin. The closest he could come was rapid recognition of an increased liking for the man when his hand was released, and the pleasant deep voice offered a quick goodbye.

"I'll stop in again, Mrs. Barchester," Serkin said; "I imagine you and your husband would like to be alone for a while."

Then he was gone, and Harry trailed Irene back into the living-room-and-office combination; he watched her put down her bag and take off her hat, and finally identified for himself the change in her. She was all... aglow.

"Harry, darling..."

She still had her back to him. "I've got to tell you something right away," she said.

This was it, then. Irene and Serkin ... that would account for the ... glow. Harry's very genuine despair was unaccountably mixed with an odd feeling of relief.

"I know," he said, trying to stop her, to keep her from saying it out loud, in so many words.

"You do?" She turned rapidly. "Oh, I shouldn't have doubted you, ever, Harry!" Facing him now, her face broke into a smile that could only be under-rated by the word "glorious". "But why didn't you want me to try it? Why didn't you make me do it?"

Her face turned up appealingly to his. Only the caution of all his bitter years' experience saved Harry then.

"Make you do it?" he repeated

"How could I make you? It's exactly the sort of thing a man forces on his wife..."

SHE AGREED happily. "That's what Jim said at first; he kept telling me you were just waiting for me to go ahead on my own. But darling...listen, Harry, even though you know, I want to say it once, to tell you what a fool I was—before." She smiled at him, and Harry felt quite certain he didn't care what sort of fool she'd been, or what she'd done. All he wanted was to keep her.

"I...oh, it's hard to say, Harry, even now. I thought you were a ... charlatan. I didn't think you believed in it yourself; that's why I never told you when I started to build the Cell. All that time I was supposed to be shopping...but of course you knew about it; I keep forgetting that. I guess you knew about the letters from Jim, too?"

"The letters?" Harry tried to find the right, noncommittal words, but they wouldn't come. "No," he admitted, "I didn't."

He knew it was impossible to be anything less than completely honest with her, now. The fascination she had always exercised over him had turned into a sort of compulsive power.

"When did that start?" he asked.

"About a week after we shipped him the stuff. You were out when it came, and I opened it. He seemed so sure of himself, and he.... really believed in the Cell. That was when I was wondering about you, whether you really believed it yourself," she explained. "So I wrote to him, and never told you about it... and then we just kept on writing: That was when I started building the Cell."

"You..." he tried to find the right, the noncommittal words, but they wouldn't come. "How did you do it?" he asked bluntly.

"What?"

"Build the Cell; how did you manage it?"

"Why, darling, you know...oh, anyone can do it. Jim says those blueprints are worth ten times what you charge; he says he doesn't see how you ever made it all so simple."

"It's all scientific," he answered automatically. "Had them designed by a damn good engineer."

Then he couldn't restrain himself. "You mean," he demanded, "it works? You built the whole dingus and made it work?"

"Why, darling, you know... oh, Harry!" She stopped short, and a look of comprehension came over her face.

"I see," she said at last. "I was right, wasn't I, dear? You never did believe in it." Her voice was very gentle, very tender. "Poor Harry! You never knew."

Even while he struggled against its implications, he basked in her sympathy. Then, as suddenly as she had changed before, the new softness vanished before a gathering determination. She walked briskly, but with ineffable grace, across the room to the cabinet, and came back with a fresh copy of the Sure-Self Cell blueprint.

"I think," she said simply, "you better start right away."

Harry managed to take his eyes off her face long enough to pull together the shreds of his convictions. "That's ridiculous!"

"Here you are, dear." She handed it to him, and pointed to the list of materials on the envelope. "You can get them in your local hardware store for under ten dollars—" She didn't seem to realize she was quoting from one of his ads. "Start now! You'll be a new man inside of three weeks."

"Yes, dear," said Harcourt Barchester L.E., M.C.B., R.S.