"This speech was too much for Michael. One cannot speak this way to the Archangel Michael. Just doesn't work. So at once he turned away from me, not angrily, not in cowardice that God's thunderbolt might miss me by a fraction and shatter his left wing. But he turned away in silence, as if to say, Memnoch you are impatient and unwise. Then he turned and mercifully said, 'Memnoch, you do not look deep enough.

These souls have only begun their evolution. Who knows how strong they may become? Man has stepped into the invisible. What if he is meant to become as we are?'

" 'But how is that to happen, Michael?' I demanded. 'How are these souls to know what are angels and what is Heaven? Do you think if we made ourselves visible to them and told them that they ...' I stopped. Even I knew this was unthinkable. I wouldn't have dared. Not in millions of years would I have dared.

"But no sooner had this thought occurred to us, had we begun brooding over it, than other angels gathered with us, and said, 'Look, living people know that we are here.'

" 'How so?' I demanded. As sorry as I felt for humanity, I didn't consider mortal menand women very smart. But these angels explained immediately.

" 'Some have sensed our presence. They sense it as they sense the presence of a dead soul. It is the same part of the brain which perceives other things invisible; I tell you we have been glimpsed and we shall now be imagined by these people. You will see.'

" 'This can't be God's wish,' said Michael. 'I say we return to Heaven at once.'

"The majority agreed with him instantly, the way angels agree, without a sound. I stood alone looking at the entire multitude.

" 'Well?' I said. 'God has given me my mission. I cannot go back until I understand,' I insisted. 'And I don't understand.'

"There ensued a huge argument. But finally Michael kissed me as angels always kiss, tenderly on the lips and cheeks, and went up to Heaven, and the whole league ascended with him.

"And I remained, standing on the earth alone. I did not pray to God; I did not look to men; I looked into myself and I thought, What shall I do? I do not wish to be seen as an angel. I do not wish to be worshipped like these surviving souls. I do not wish to anger God; but I have to fulfill His commandment to me. I have to understand. Now, I am invisible. But what if I can do what these clever souls do—that is, gather matter to me to make for myself a body—gather sufficient tiny particles from all the world—

and who knows better than I do what a man is made of, having seen him evolve from his earliest stages, who knows better the makeup of tissue and cell and bone and fiber and brain matter than I know? Except God?