I recognized the name of one of our consuls and I replied, disconcerted, “The garden?” “The garden of forking paths.” Something stirred in my memory and I uttered with incomprehensible certainty, “The garden of my ancestor Ts’ui Pên.” “Your ancestor? Your illustrious ancestor? Come in.” The damp path zigzagged like those of my childhood. We came to a library of Eastern and Western books. I recognized bound in yellow silk several volumes of the Lost Encyclopedia, edited by the Third Emperor of the Luminous Dynasty but never printed. The record on the phonograph revolved next to a bronze phoenix. I also recall a famille rose vase and another, many centuries older, of that shade of blue which our craftsmen copied from the potters of Persia . . . Stephen Albert observed me with a smile. He was, as I have said, very tall, sharp-featured, with gray eyes and a gray beard. He told me that he had been a missionary in Tientsin “before aspiring to become a Sinologist.” We sat down—I on a long, low divan, he with his back to the window and a tall circular clock. I calculated that my pursuer, Richard Madden, could not arrive for at least an hour. My irrevocable determination could wait. “An astounding fate, that of Ts’ui Pên,” Stephen Albert said.