f crystal-clear
jewels of sound, golden tollings--and all ordered, mathematical,
GEOMETRIC, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians of
the ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.

What was it? I had it--IT WAS THOSE GESTURES TRANSFORMED INTO SOUND!

There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid,
seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were
little flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go--like
little awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeous
fireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds
and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies--blinking, gleaming.

A shimmering mist drew down around them--a swift and swirling mist.
It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb,
coruscating strands of light.

The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vivid
sparklings. They ran together, condensed--and all this in an instant, in
a tenth of the time it takes me to write it.

From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The
cliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened,
the monoliths trembled, fell.

In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened
my blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint
lambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel's mouth
had vanished, had been sealed--where it had gaped were only tons of
shattered rock.

Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand,
something whose touch was like that of warm metal--but metal throbbing
with life. They rushed by--and whispered down into silence.

"Come!" Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the
darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her hand
grip my wrist.

"Walter," she whispered, "Walter--she isn't human!"

"Nonsense," I muttered. "Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is--a
goddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She's as human as you or I."

"No." Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly
head. "Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or
have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel's mouth? And her
skin and hair--they're too WONDERFUL, Walter.

"Why, she makes me look--look coarse. And the light that hovers about
her--why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she
touched me-