Josef looked down at himself with some amazement. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize that I had one on. I like to paint models in togas, though. You can do so much with the folds—” He broke off, angry again. “You aren’t answering my questions at all. What’s happening? How is it that I meet you in my dreams?” He paused and shook his head. “You look like a boy now, but most of the time you look like an old man. You can’t fool me, though. You’re the same one.”

“I’ve told you before, but you never remember,” Seven said. “I’m something like your mother and something like your father, but neither. We’re closer than sister and brother, mother and daughter, or father and son. That’s all I can tell you now. You have to learn some things for yourself. You are learning fast, but you wandered in where you shouldn’t be. I know you had a reason, though: You never look for me unless you’re in trouble.”

Seven caught the rebuke in his own voice and added quickly: “That’s all right. I understand. But what’s bothering you?” He looked around to see if Cyprus approved of the way he was handling the situation, but Cyprus had sympathetically dematerialized.

Josef never noticed. He said mournfully: “I’m twenty-four and I don’t have any discipline. I can’t keep myself at my easel two hours at a time, yet painting is what I want to do more than anything else in the world. If I don’t learn some discipline, I’m afraid I’ll lose what talent I have—and God knows how much that is, to begin with. On top of that I haven’t felt any real inspiration for a year.”

Seven shook his head. Before his eyes, Josef was turning into a big unhappy bear, his dark moustache transformed into fur, his eyes belligerent and sad at the same time, his toga changing into a blanket. Josef looked down at himself, hysterically. “I’m a circus bear; something for people to laugh at. Oh, what a dream. It’s got to be a dream.” Then the bear growled threateningly.

“Come on now,” Seven said, and patted its head. “Turn back into yourself. In the dream state you take different forms as your feelings and thoughts change. You felt like a bear, so you look like one.”

“Really?” Josef was himself again. Immediately he forgot what had happened. “If I don’t do something, I’m going to ruin my life,” he said.

“Oh, you can’t do that,” Oversoul Seven said. “You aren’t aware of your real problem yet. It’s one of my jobs to help you, so I’ll get back to you shortly. In the meantime I’ll do some little thing to tide you over.”