Dear Miss Stickyfoot (he wrote back),

I love you and believe in you. But just to be on the safe side – from my point of view, I mean – could you remit under separate cover – C.O.D. if you wish – some item or object or artifact which would prove beyond a reasonable doubt who and what you are, if that's not asking too much. Try and understand my position. I dare not make a second mistake such as in the Foundfully disaster. This time I would go out the window along with the Hermes.

With adoration, etc.

This he floated off in a northwest direction, and at once set about waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, however, he had to visit Dr. Drat once more. Hilda insisted on it.

"And how's it been going, down by the creek?" Dr. Drat said in a jovial manner, his big fuzzy hoppers up on his desk.

The decision to be frank and honest with the psychiatrist stole over Cadbury. Surely there lay no harm in telling Drat everything; this was what he was being paid for: to hear the truth with all its details, both horrid and sublime.

"I've fallen in love with Carol Stickyfoot," he began. "But at the same time, although my love is absolute and eternal, I have this nagging angst that she's a figment of my wife's deranged imagination, concocted as was Miss Foundfully to lead me into revealing my true self to Hilda, which at all costs I need to conceal. Because if my true self came out I'd knock the frigging crap out of her and leave her flat."

"Hmm," Dr. Drat said.

"And out of you, too," Cadbury said, releasing all his hostilities in one grand basketful.

Dr. Drat said, "You trust no one, then? You're alienated from all mankind? You've lead a life-pattern that's drawn you insidiously into total isolation? Think before you answer; the answer may be yes, and this you may have trouble facing."

"I'm not isolated from Carol Stickyfoot," Cadbury said hotly. "In fact that's the whole point; I'm trying to terminate my isolation. When I was preoccupied with blue chips then I was isolated. Meeting and getting to know Miss Stickyfoot may mean the end of all that's wrong in my life, and if you have any insight into me you'd be damn glad I floated off that snuff tin that day. Damn glad." He glowered moodily at the long-eared doctor.

"It may interest you to know," Dr. Drat said, "that Miss Stickyfoot is a former patient of mine. She cracked up in Madrid and had to be flown back here in a suitcase. I'll admit she's quite attractive, but she's got a lot of emotional problems. And her left breast is larger than her right."

"But you admit she's real!" Cadbury shouted in excited discovery.

"Oh, she's real enough; I'll grant that. But you may find you have your hands full. After a while you may wish you were back with Hilda again. God only knows where Carol Stickyfoot may lead the two of you. I doubt if Carol herself knows."

It sounded pretty damn good to Cadbury, and he returned to his virtually gnawed-through poplar tree at the creek bank in high spirits. The time, according to his waterproof Rolex watch, came to only ten-thirty, and so he had more or less the entire day to plan out what he should do, now that he knew that Carol Stickyfoot really existed and was not merely another snare and delusion manufactured by his wife.

Several regions of the creek remained unmapped, and, because of the nature of his employment, he knew these places intimately. Six or seven hours lay ahead before he had to report home to Hilda; why not abandon the poplar project temporarily and begin hasty construction of an adequate little concealed shelter for himself and Carol, beyond the ability of the world at large to identify, locate or recognize? It had become action time; thinking time had passed.

Toward the latter part of the day, while he labored deeply engrossed in erecting the adequate little concealed shelter, a tin of Dean's Own came floating southeast down the creek. In a boiling wake of paddled water he rushed out to seize the snuff tin before it drifted by.

When he had removed the Scotch Tape and opened it he found a small package wrapped in tissue paper and a derisive note.

Here's your proof (the note read).

The package contained three blue chips.

For over an hour Cadbury could scarcely trust his teeth to gnaw properly, so great was the shock of Carol's token of authenticity, her pledge to him and all that he represented. In near madness he bit through branch after branch of an old oak tree, scattering boughs in every direction. A strange frenzy overcame him. He had actually found someone, had managed to escape Hilda – the road lay ahead and he had only to travel it… or rather swim it.

Tying several empty snuff tins together with a length of twine he pushed off into the creek; the tins floated more or less northwest and Cadbury paddled after them, breathing heavily with anticipation. As he paddled, keeping the snuff tins perpetually in view, he composed a rhymed quatrain for the occasion of meeting Carol face to face.

There's few who say I love you.

But this, I swear, is truth:

The deed which I have sought to

Is sure and sound and sooth.

He did not know exactly what "sooth" meant, but how many words rhymed with "truth"?

Meanwhile, the tied-together snuff tins led him nearer and nearer – or so he hoped and believed – to Miss Carol Stickyfoot. Bliss. But then, as he paddled along, he got to recalling the sly, carefully-casual remarks of Dr. Drat, the seeds of uncertainty planted in Drat's professional fashion. Did he (meaning himself, not Drat) have the courage, the power and integrity, the dedication of purpose, to cope with Carol if she had, as Drat declared, severe emotional problems? Suppose Drat turned out to be correct? Suppose Carol proved to be more difficult and destructive than even Hilda – who threw his Hermes portable typewriter through the window and suchlike manifestations of psychopathic rage?

Busy ruminating, he failed to notice that the several tied-together snuff tins had coasted silently to shore. Reflexively, he paddled after them and up out of the creek onto land.

Ahead – a modest apartment with handpainted window shades and a nonobjective mobile swinging lazily above the door. And there, on the front porch, sat Carol Stickyfoot, drying her hair with a large white fluffy towel.

"I love you," Cadbury said. He shook the creek-water from his pelt and fidgeted about in a dither of suppressed affect.

Glancing up, Carol Stickyfoot appraised him. She had lovely huge dark eyes and long heavy hair which shone in the fading sun. "I hope you brought the three blue chips back," she said. "Because, see, I borrowed them from the place I work and I have to return them." She added, "It was a gesture because you seemed to need assurance. The fuds have been getting to you, like that headshrinker Drat. He's a real fud of the worst sort. Would you like a cup of instant Yuban coffee?"

As he followed her into her modest apartment Cadbury said, "I guess you heard my opening remark. I have never been more serious in my whole life. I really do love you, and in the most serious manner. I'm not looking for something trivial or casual or temporary; I'm looking for the most durable and serious kind of relationship there is. I hope in God's name you're not just playing, because I never felt more serious and tense about anything in my life, even including blue chips. If this is just a way of amusing yourself or some such thing it would be merciful for you to end it now by plainly speaking out. Because the torture of leaving my wife and beginning a new life and then finding out -"

"Did Dr. Fud tell you I paint?" Carol Stickyfoot asked as she put a pan of water on the stove in her modest kitchen and lit the burner under it with an old-fashioned large wooden match.

"He told me only that you flipped your cork in Madrid," Cadbury said. He seated himself at the small wooden unpainted pine table opposite the stove and watched with love in his heart Miss Stickyfoot spooning instant coffee into two ceramic mugs which had pataphysical spirals baked into their glaze.