de
the senses, but the soul. Does your duty call you to Sant, Tydomin? Then
go there. Does it not call you to Sant? Then go no farther. Is not this
simple? What signs are necessary?"

"Did I not see you dispel those spouts of lightning? No common man could
have done that."

"Who knows what any man can do? This man can do one thing, that man can
do another. But what all men can do is their duty; and to open their
eyes to this, I must go to Sant, and if necessary lay down my life. Will
you not still accompany me?"

"Yes," said Tydomin, "I will follow you to the end. It is all the more
essential, because I keep on displeasing you with my remarks, and that
means I have not yet learned my lesson properly."

"Do not be humble, for humility is only self-judgment, and while we are
thinking of self, we must be neglecting some action we could be planning
or shaping in our mind."

Tydomin continued to be uneasy and preoccupied.

"Why was Maskull not in the picture?" she asked.

"You dwell on this foreboding because you imagine it is tragical. There
is nothing tragical in death, Tydomin, nor in life. There is only right
and wrong. What arises from right or wrong action does not matter. We
are not gods, constructing a world, but simple men and women, doing our
immediate duty. We may die in Sant--so you have seen it; but the truth
will go on living."

"Spadevil, why do you choose Sant to start your work in?" asked Maskull.
"These men with fixed ideas seem to me the least likely of any to follow
a new light."

"Where a bad tree thrives, a good tree will flourish. But where no tree
at all can be found, nothing will grow."

"I understand you," said Maskull. "Here perhaps we are going to
martyrdom, but elsewhere we should resemble men preaching to cattle."

Shortly before sunset they arrived at the extremity of the upland
plain, above which towered the black cliffs of the Sant Levels. A dizzy,
artificially constructed staircase, of more than a thousand steps of
varying depth, twisting and forking in order to conform to the angles of
the precipices, led to the world overhead. In the place where they
stood they were sheltered from the cutting winds. Branchspell, radiantly
shining at last, but on the point of sinking, filled the cloudy sky with
violent, lurid colors, some of the combinations of which were new to
Maskull. The circle of the horizon was so gigantic, that had he been
suddenly carried back to Earth, he would by com