ill night; the black cloud of death had passed on;
the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank
in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.

Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood
nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence--the brooding
silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida--Georg; they seemed like
people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the
_Rhaal_ City of Industriana. _I_ had been trying to get there. I must
get there now--join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was
nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.

Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a
daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning,
with only that one idea--to get to Industriana; and in the background of
my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me.
Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I
wandered.

At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night
hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see
them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky.
Insects--and sometimes larger beings--leaped and slithered unseen before
my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I
stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I
did not notice them.

And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and
consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth--a black thicket
which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh--I was transfixed by a
woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A
crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped
my breath, turned me cold.

Elza!

CHAPTER XXX

_The Monster_

I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared--awake at last to
full rationality and consciousness--beneath the horror came a surging
joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was
repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with
my arms and plunged forward through the darkness.

Ahead of me the thickets opened into a sort of clearing. I saw the sky,
the stars--paling stars with the first flush of dawn overpowering them.
I stood at the edge of an open space in the dim, flat-grey illumination
of morning twilight.

Elza! S