rm. There were no insects to irritate them. The bright lake
outside looked cool and poetic.

Gangnet pressed Maskull's arm affectionately. "If the bringing of you
from your world had fallen to me, Maskull, it is here I would have
brought you, and not to the scarlet desert. Then you would have escaped
the dark spots, and Tormance would have appeared beautiful to you."

"And what then, Gangnet? The dark spots would have existed all the
same."

"You could have seen them afterward. It makes all the difference whether
one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows."

"A clear eye is the best. Tormance is an ugly world, and I greatly
prefer to know it as it really is."

"The devil made it ugly, not Crystalman. These are Crystalman's
thoughts, which you see around you. He is nothing but Beauty and
Pleasantness. Even Krag won't have the effrontery to deny that."

"It's very nice here," said Krag, looking around him malignantly. "One
only wants a cushion and half a dozen houris to complete it."

Maskull disengaged himself from Gangnet. "Last night, when I was
struggling through the mud in the ghastly moonlight--then I thought the
world beautiful."

"Poor Sullenbode!" said Gangnet sighing.

"What! You knew her?"

"I know her through you. By mourning for a noble woman, you show your
own nobility. I think all women are noble."

"There may be millions of noble women, but there's only one Sullenbode."

"If Sullenbode can exist," said Gangnet, "the world cannot be a bad
place."

"Change the subject.... The world's hard and cruel, and I am thankful to
be leaving it."

"On one point, though, you both agree," said Krag, smiling evilly.
"Pleasure is good, and the cessation of pleasure is bad."

Gangnet glanced at him coldly. "We know your peculiar theories, Krag.
You are very fond of them, but they are unworkable. The world could not
go on being, without pleasure."

"So Gangnet thinks!" jeered Krag.

They came to the end of the wood, and found themselves overlooking a
little cliff. At the foot of it, about fifty feet below, a fresh series
of lakes and forests commenced. Barey appeared to be one big mountain
slope, built by nature into terraces. The lake along whose border they
had been travelling was not banked at the end, but overflowed to the
lower level in half a dozen beautiful, threadlike falls, white and
throwing off spray. The cliff was not perpendicular, and the men found
it easy to ne