I wept alone.

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.

The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could.

Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.

A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe?

Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto