We need not go back through the cavern of the monsters," she said. "There is a way to reach the unseen road from here. - Henry Kuttner

"Dr. Manning said he'd thought at first it might be sleeping sickness, or even narcolepsy, whatever that was, but - no, Pete was healthy enough physically. Manoel growled that the boy was bone-lazy, spending his time fishing and reading. Reading! No good could come of such things.

'In a way you're right, Manoel,' Dr. Manning said hesitantly. 'It's natural for a boy to day-dream now and then, but I think Pedro does it too much. I've let him use my library whenever he wanted, but it seems... h'm... it seems he reads the wrong things. Fairy tales are very charming, but they don't help a boy to cope with real life.'

'Com certeza,' Manoel agreed. 'You mean he has crazy ideas in the head.'

'Oh, they're rather nice ideas,' Dr. Manning said. 'But they're only fairy tales, and they're beginning to seem true to Pete. You see, Manoel, there are really two worlds, the real one, and the one you make up inside your mind. Sometimes a boy - or even a man - gets to like his dream world so much he just forgets about the real one and lives in the one he's made up.'

'I know,' Manoel said. 'I have seen some who do that. It is a bad thing.'

'It would be bad for Pete. He's a very sensitive boy. If you live too much in dreams, you can't face real life squarely.'

("Before I Wake...")"

I never understood the ultimate answer. That was beyond me. It took the combined skills of three great civilizations far apart in time to frame that godlike concept in which the tangible universe itself was only a single factor. And even then it was not enough. It took the Face of Ea — which I shall never be able to describe fully. I saw it, though. I saw it...

The stars glittered frostily overhead, unconcerned with the fate of Atlantis — stars that would be shining thousands of years hence when Atlantis was not even a memory.