you left behind," she added swiftly.

"How know you of that, Lakla?" I gasped.

"Oft and oft I came to him there, and to you, while you lay sleeping.
How call you _him_?" She paused.

"Larry!" I said.

"Larry!" she repeated it excellently. "And you?"

"Goodwin," said Rador.

I bowed quite as though I were being introduced to some charming young
lady met in that old life now seemingly aeons removed.

"Yes--Goodwin." she said. "Oft and oft I came. Sometimes I thought
you saw me. And _he_--did he not dream of me sometime--?" she asked
wistfully.

"He did." I said, "and watched for you." Then amazement grew vocal.
"But how came you?" I asked.

"By a strange road," she whispered, "to see that all was well with
_him_--and to look into his heart; for I feared Yolara and her beauty.
But I saw that she was not in his heart." A blush burned over her,
turning even the little bare breast rosy. "It is a strange road," she
went on hurriedly. "Many times have I followed it and watched the
Shining One bear back its prey to the blue pool; seen the woman _he_
seeks"--she made a quick gesture toward Olaf--"and a babe cast from
her arms in the last pang of her mother love; seen another woman throw
herself into the Shining One's embrace to save a man she loved; and I
could not help!" Her voice grew deep, thrilled. "The friend, it comes
to me, who drew you here, Goodwin!"

She was silent, walking as one who sees visions and listens to voices
unheard by others, Rador made a warning gesture; I crowded back my
questions, glanced about me. We were passing over a smooth strand,
hard packed as some beach of long-thrust-back ocean. It was like
crushed garnets, each grain stained deep red, faintly sparkling. On
each side were distances, the floor stretching away into them bare of
vegetation--stretching on and on into infinitudes of rosy mist, even
as did the space above.

Flanking and behind us marched the giant batrachians, fivescore of
them at least, black scale and crimson scale lustrous and gleaming in
the rosaceous radiance; saucer eyes shining circles of phosphorescence
green, purple, red; spurs clicking as they crouched along with a gait
at once grotesque and formidable.

Ahead the mist deepened into a ruddier glow; through it a long, dark
line began to appear--the mouth I thought of the caverned space
through which we were going; it was just before us; over us--we stood
bathed in a flood of rubescence!

A sea stretched b