“But—oh, look here, shut up! The girl like an empress—”
“I saw no empress, nor any girl, nor have you seen them.”
“Ansell, don’t rag.”
“Elliot, I never rag, and you know it. She was not really there.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Rickie exclaimed, “I’ve got you. You say—or was it Tilliard?—no, YOU say that the cow’s there. Well—there these people are, then. Got you. Yah!”
“Did it never strike you that phenomena may be of two kinds: ONE, those which have a real existence, such as the cow; TWO, those which are the subjective product of a diseased imagination, and which, to our destruction, we invest with the semblance of reality? If this never struck you, let it strike you now.”
Rickie spoke again, but received no answer. He paced a little up and down the sombre roam. Then he sat on the edge of the table and watched his clever friend draw within the square a circle, and within the circle a square, and inside that another circle, and inside that another square.
“Why will you do that?”
No answer.
“Are they real?”