“Shall we ever get there?” she asked, pointing ahead with the hand that held the reins.
“To Mogador? Yes, I hope so,” I answered with a laugh. I thought she was tired.
“No, not Mogador. The dream-city—where every one wants to get.”
“You have travelled far, my dear,” said I, “to hanker now after dream-cities and the unattainable. I knew a little girl once who would have asked: ‘What is a dream-city?”
“She doesn’t ask now because she knows,” replied Carlotta. “No. We shall never get there. It looks as if we were riding straight into it—but when we get close, it will just be Mogador.”
“Aren’t you happy, Carlotta?” I asked.
“Are you, Seer Marcous?”
“I? I am a philosopher, my child, and a happy philosopher would be a lusus naturae, a freak, a subject for a Barnum & Bailey Show. If they caught him they would put him between the hairy man and the living skeleton.”
“I suppose I’m getting to be a philosopher, too,” said Carlotta, “and I hate it! Sometimes I think I hate everything and everybody—save you, Seer Marcous, darling. It’s wicked of me. I must have been born wicked. But I used to be happy. I never wanted to go to dream-cities. I was just like a cat. Like Polyphemus. Do you remember Polyphemus?”
“Yes,” said I. And then set off my balance by this strange conversation with Carlotta, I added: “I killed him.”