* *

I suppose I walked the upper levels half the night, oblivious alike of
the narrow strip of stars that showed between the towering walls of
twenty-first century New York, and the intermittent roar of traffic
from the freight levels. Certainly this was the worst predicament of all
those into which the fiendish contraptions of the great van Manderpootz
had thrust me.

In love with a point of view! In love with a woman who had no existence
apart from the beglamoured eyes of Carter. It wasn't Lisa Fitch I loved;
indeed, I rather hated her angular ugliness. What I had fallen in love
with was the way she looked to Carter, for there is nothing in the world
quite as beautiful as a lover's conception of his sweetheart.

This predicament was far worse than my former ones. When I had fallen in
love with a girl already dead, I could console myself with the thought
of what might have been. When I had fallen in love with my own
ideal--well, at least she was _mine_, even if I couldn't have her. But
to fall in love with another man's conception! The only way that
conception could even continue to exist was for Carter to remain in love
with Lisa Fitch, which rather effectually left me outside the picture
altogether. She was absolutely unattainable to me, for Heaven knows I
didn't want the real Lisa Fitch--"real" meaning, of course, the one who
was real to me. I suppose in the end Carter's Lisa Fitch was as real as
the skinny scarecrow my eyes saw.

She was unattainable--or was she? Suddenly an echo of a long-forgotten
psychology course recurred to me. Attitudes are habits. Viewpoints are
attitudes. Therefore viewpoints are habits. And habits can be learned!

There was the solution! All I had to do was to learn, or to acquire by
practice, the viewpoint of Carter. What I had to do was literally to put
myself in his place, to look at things in his way, to see his viewpoint.
For once I learned to do that, I could see in Lisa Fitch the very things
he saw, and the vision would become reality to me as well as to him.

I planned carefully. I did not care to face the sarcasm of the great van
Manderpootz; therefore I would work in secret. I would visit his
laboratory at such times as he had classes or lectures, and I would use
the attitudinizor to study the viewpoint of Carter, and to, as it were,
practice that viewpoint. Thus I would have the means at hand of testing
my progress, for all I had to do was glance at Miss Fitch wit