k.

I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raised
her head and met my gaze. And in her eyes I read both terror and--shame.

It came to me that painful as it might be for her the time for
questioning had come.

"Ruth," I said, "I know it's not necessary to remind you that we're in
a tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can lay
hold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine our
course.

"I'm going to repeat your brother's question--what did Norhala do to
you? And what happened when you were floating before the Disk?"

The blaze of interest in Drake's eyes at these questions changed to
amazement at her stricken recoil from them.

"There was nothing," she whispered--then defiantly--"nothing. I don't
know what you mean."

"Ruth!" I spoke sharply now, in my own perplexity. "You do know. You
must tell us--for his sake." I pointed toward Ventnor.

She drew a long breath.

"You're right--of course," she said unsteadily. "Only I--I thought maybe
I could fight it out myself. But you'll have to know it--there's a taint
upon me."

I caught in Drake's swift glance the echo of my own thrill of
apprehension for her sanity.

"Yes," she said, now quietly. "Some new and alien thing within my heart,
my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode the flying
block, and--he--sealed upon me when I was in--his"--again she crimsoned,
"embrace."

And as we gazed at her, incredulously:

"A thing that urges me to forget you two--and Martin--and all the
world I've known. That tries to pull me from you--from all--to drift
untroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace.
And whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed!

"It whispered to me first," she said, "from Norhala--when she put her
arm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover
me like--like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and
peace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterly
tranquil and utterly free.

"I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies--and the life I had
known only a dream--and you, all of you--even Martin, dreams within a
dream. You weren't--real--and you did not--matter."

"Hypnotism," muttered Drake, as she paused.

"No." She shook her head. "No--more than that. The wonder of it
grew--and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, saw
nothing--except th