rubbed softly
against the rim-ice and came to rest. The rainbow-wall hung above like
a fairy pile; the sun, flung backward from innumerable facets, clothed
it in jewelled splendor. Silvery streams tinkled down its crystal
slopes; and in its clear depths seemed to unfold, veil on veil, the
secrets of life and death and mortal striving,--vistas of
pale-shimmering azure opening like dream-visions, and promising, down
there in the great cool heart, infinite rest, infinite cessation and
rest.

The topmost tower, delicately massive, a score of feet above them,
swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer
airs. But Corliss gazed at it unheeding. Just to lie there, on the
marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great
gulps, and do nothing!--he asked no more. A dervish, whirling on heel
till all things blur, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove
the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying a paddle, and plying and
plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space.
And so Corliss.

But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no
longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back
to him.

"We've got to get out of this," he said. His voice sounded like a
man's whose throat has been scorched by many and long potations. It
frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.

"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which
seemed to come to him from a far distance.

Tommy lifted his head and gazed about. "A doot we'll juist hae to gie
it oop."

"Bend to it!"

"Ye'll no try it anither?"

"Bend to it!" Corliss repeated.

"Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.

Once again they fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished,
save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning
fissure. But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed
them from above, and only a rocky buttress of implacable hate, around
whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between. Then La
Bijou leaped and throbbed and shook again, and the current slid out
from under, and they remained ever in one place. _Dip and lift, dip
and lift_, through an infinity of time and torture and travail, till
even the line dimmed and faded and the struggle lost its meaning.
Their souls became merged in the rhythm of the toil. Ever lifting,
ever falling, they seemed