“Yes.”

“And I realized I was overhearing this strange conversation … and it wasn’t in English and it wasn’t in French … and gradually I came to know that it wasn’t in any language really, and yet it was fully understandable to me. I put down my paper, and began to concentrate. On and on it went. It was a sort of argument. And suddenly I didn’t know whether or not the voices were audible in any conventional sense. I wasn’t sure anyone else could actually hear this! I looked up and slowly turned around.

“And there they were … two beings, seated at the table talking to each other, and just for a moment, it seemed normal—two men in conversation. I looked back at my paper, and this swimming feeling came over me. I had to anchor myself to something, to fix on the paper for a moment and then the tabletop, and make the swimming cease. The noise of the café came back like a full orchestra. And I knew I’d just turned and looked at two individuals who weren’t human beings.

“I turned around again, forcing myself to focus tightly, to be aware of things, keenly aware. And there they were still, and it was painfully clear they were illusory. They simply weren’t of the same fabric as everything else. Do you know what I’m saying? I can break it down into parts. They weren’t being illuminated by the same light, for instance, they existed in some realm where the light was from another source.”

“Like the light in Rembrandt.”

“Yes, rather like that. Their clothes and their faces were smoother than those of human beings. Why, the whole vision was of a different texture, and that texture was uniform in all its details.”

“Did they see you?”

“No. I mean to say, they didn’t look at me, or acknowledge me. They looked at each other, they went on talking, and I picked up the thread again instantly. It was God talking to the Devil and telling the Devil that he must go on doing the job. And the Devil didn’t want to do it. He explained that his term had already been too long. The same thing was happening to him that had happened to all the others. God said that He understood, but the Devil ought to know how important he was, he couldn’t simply shirk his duties, it wasn’t that simple, God needed him, and needed him to be strong. And all this was very amicable.”

“What did they look like?”

“That’s the worst part of it. I don’t know. At the time I saw two vague shapes, large, definitely male, or assuming male form, shall we say, and pleasant-looking—nothing monstrous, nothing out of the ordinary really. I wasn’t aware of any absence of particulars—you know, hair color, facial features, that sort of thing. The two figures seemed quite complete. But when I tried to reconstruct the event afterwards, I couldn’t recall any details! I don’t think the illusion was that nearly complete. I think I was satisfied by it, but the sense of completeness sprang from something else.”