at once through the peace enfolding me pierced warning
that Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutching
Norhala and to see floating up in her eyes death for him.

"And I saved him--and again forgot. Then, when I saw that
beautiful, flaming Shape--I felt no terror, no fear--only a
tremendous--joyous--anticipation, as though--as though--" She faltered,
hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered: "and
when--it--lifted me it was as though I had come at last out of some
endless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise."

"Ruth!" cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced.

"Wait," she said, and held up a little, tremulous hand. "You asked--and
now you must listen."

She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low,
curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt:

"I was free--free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love or
hate; free even of hope--for what was there to hope for when everything
desirable was mine? And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yet
fully conscious that I was--I.

"It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the
breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little
wind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen;
a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes.

"And there was music--strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not
terrible to me--who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes that
rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like
the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. And
all--all--passionless, yet--rapturous.

"Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality--a
flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this
energy were--reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the elemental
things, changing me fully into them.

"I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing--then came the shots.
Awakening was--dreadful, a struggling back from drowning. I saw
Martin--blasted. I drove the--the spell away from me, tore it away.

"And, O Walter--Dick--it hurt--it hurt--and for a breath before I ran
to him it was like--like coming from a world in which there was no
disorder, no sorrow, no doubts, a rhythmic, harmonious world of light
and music, into--into a world that was like a black and dirty kitchen.

"And it's there," her voice ros