"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are implanted very
early. That's why you continually fall in love with girls who possess
one or another feature that reminds you of her, her hair, her nose, her
mouth, her eyes. Very simple, but rather curious."
"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Everytime I look into one of
your damned contraptions I find myself in love with a myth! A girl who's
dead, or married, or unreal, or turned into an old woman! Curious, eh?
Damned funny, isn't it?"
"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens, Dixon, that
she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles her mother. And what's
still more, she's arriving in New York next week to study American
letters at the University here. She writes, you see."
That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How--how do you know?" I
gasped.
It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness of van
Manderpootz ruffled. He reddened a trifle, and said slowly, "It also
happens, Dixon, that many years ago in Amsterdam, Haskel van Manderpootz
and de Lisle d'Agrion were--very friendly--more than friendly, I might
say, but for the fact that two such powerful personalities as the Dragon
Fly and van Manderpootz were always at odds." He frowned. "I was almost
her second husband. She's had seven, I believe; Denise is the daughter
of her third."
"Why--why is she coming here?"
"Because," he said with dignity, "van Manderpootz is here. I am still a
friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the complex device on the
table. "Hand me that wrench," he ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and
tomorrow start reconstructing it for Isaak's head."
* * * * *
But when, the following week, I rushed eagerly back to van Manderpootz's
laboratory, the idealizator was still in place. The professor greeted me
with a humorous twist to what was visible of his bearded mouth. "Yes,
it's still here," he said, gesturing at the device. "I've decided to
build an entirely new one for Isaak, and besides, this one has afforded
me considerable amusement. Furthermore, in the words of Oscar Wilde, who
am I to tamper with a work of genius. After all, the mechanism is the
product of the great van Manderpootz."
He was deliberately tantalizing me. He knew that I hadn't come to hear
him discourse on Isaak, or even on the incomparable van Manderpootz.
Then he smiled and softened, and turned to the little inner office
adjacent, the room where Isaak stood in metal austerity. "Denise!" he
called, "come here."
I don't know exactly what I expected, but I do know that the breath left
me as the girl entered. She wasn't exactly my image of the ideal, of
course; she was perhaps the merest trifle slimmer, and her eyes--well,
they must have been much like those of de Lisle d'Agrion, for they were
the clearest emerald I've ever seen. They were impudently direct eyes,
and I could imagine why van Manderpootz and the Dragon Fly might have
been forever quarreling; that was easy to imagine, looking into the eyes
of the Dragon Fly's daughter.
Nor was Denise, apparently, quite as femininely modest as my image of
perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing costume of the day,
which covered, I suppose, about as much of her as one of the one-piece
swimming suits of the middle years of the twentieth century. She gave an
impression, not so much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple
strength, an air of independence, frankness, and--I say it
again--impudence.
"Well!" she said coolly as van Manderpootz presented me. "So you're the
scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation. Every now and then your escapades
enliven the Paris Sunday supplements. Wasn't it you who snared a million
dollars in the market so you could ask Whimsy White--?"
I flushed. "That was greatly exaggerated," I said hastily, "and anyway I
lost it before we--uh--before I--"
"Not before you made somewhat of a fool of yourself, I believe," she
finished sweetly.
Well, that's the sort she was. If she hadn't been so infernally lovely,
if she hadn't looked so much like the face in the mirror, I'd have
flared up, said "Pleased to have met you," and never have seen her
again. But I couldn't get angry, not when she had the dusky hair, the
perfect lips, the saucy nose of the being who to me was ideal.
So I did see her again, and several times again. In fact, I suppose I
occupied most of her time between the few literary courses she was
taking, and little by little I began to see that in other respects
besides the physical she was not so far from my ideal. Beneath her
impudence was honesty, and frankness, and, despite herself, sweetness,
so that even allowing for the head-start I'd had, I fell in love pretty
hastily. And what's more, I knew she was beginning to reciprocate.
That was the situation when I called for her one noon and took her over
to van Manderpootz's laboratory. We were to lunch with him at the
University Club, but we found him occupied in directing some experiment
in the big laboratory beyond his personal one, untangling some sort of
mess that his staff had blundered into. So Denise and I wandered back
into the smaller room, perfectly content to be alone together. I simply
couldn't feel hungry in her presence; just talking to her was enough of
a substitute for food.
"I'm going to be a good writer," she was saying musingly. "Some day,
Dick, I'm going to be famous."
Well, everyone knows how correct that prediction was. I agreed with her
instantly.