of-hand
suddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes and
pyramids and globes threading with a curious suggestion of ferment.

With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a moment
before they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous,
a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed and
ANIMATE--as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic
shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.

A troll from the kindergarten! A kobold of the toys!

Only for a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, melting
with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square
and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the
transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing
form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, a
transcendental geometric art as though each swift shaping were a symbol,
a WORD--

Euclid's problems given volition!

Geometry endowed with consciousness!

It ceased. Then the cubes drew one upon the other until they formed
a pedestal nine inches high; up this pillar rolled the larger globe,
balanced itself upon the top; the five spheres followed it, clustered
like a ring just below it. The other cubes raced up, clicked two by two
on the outer arc of each of the five balls; at the ends of these twin
blocks a pyramid took its place, tipping each with a point.

The Lilliputian fantasy was now a pedestal of cubes surmounted by a ring
of globes from which sprang a star of five arms.

The spheres began to revolve. Faster and faster they spun around the
base of the crowning globe; the arms became a disc upon which tiny
brilliant sparks appeared, clustered, vanished only to reappear in
greater number.

The troll swept toward me. It GLIDED. The finger of panic touched me. I
sprang aside, and swift as light it followed, seemed to poise itself to
leap.

"Drop it!" It was Ruth's cry.

But, before I could let fall the pyramid I had forgotten was in my hand,
the little figure touched me and a paralyzing shock ran through me. My
fingers clenched, locked. I stood, muscle and nerve bound, unable to
move.

The little figure paused. Its whirling disc shifted from the horizontal
plane on which it spun. It was as though it cocked its head to look up
at me--and again I had the sense of innumerable eyes peering at me. It
did not seem menacing--its attitude was inq