lance to actual life."

"If Shaping's plans had gone straight, life would have been like that
other sort of music. He who seeks can find traces of that intention in
the world of nature. But as it has turned out, real life resembles my
music and mine is the true music."

"Shall we see living shapes?"

"I don't know what my mood will be," returned Earthrid. "But when I have
finished, you shall adventure your tune, and produce whatever shapes you
please--unless, indeed, the tune is out of your own big body."

"The shocks you are preparing may kill us," said Gleameil, in a low,
taut voice, "but we shall die, seeing beauty."

Earthrid looked at her with a dignified expression.

"Neither you, nor any other person, can endure the thoughts which I put
into my music. Still, you must have it your own way. It needed a woman
to call it 'beauty.' But if this is beauty, what is ugliness?"

"That I can tell you, Master," replied Gleameil, smiling at him.
"Ugliness is old, stale life, while yours every night issues fresh from
the womb of nature."

Earthrid stared at her, without response. "Teargeld is rising," he said
at last. "And now you shall see--though not for long."

As the words left his mouth, the full moon peeped over the hills in the
dark eastern sky. They watched it in silence, and soon it was wholly
up. It was larger than the moon of Earth, and seemed nearer. Its shadowy
parts stood out in just as strong relief, but somehow it did not give
Maskull the impression of being a dead world. Branchspell shone on
the whole of it, but Alppain only on a part. The broad crescent that
reflected Branchspell's rays alone was white and brilliant; but the part
that was illuminated by both suns shone with a greenish radiance that
had almost solar power, and yet was cold and cheerless. On gazing at
that combined light, he felt the same sense of disintegration that the
afterglow of Alppain had always caused in him; but now the feeling was
not physical, but merely aesthetic. The moon did not appear romantic to
him, but disturbing and mystical.

Earthrid rose, and stood quietly for a minute. In the bright moonlight,
his face seemed to have undergone a change. It lost its loose, weak,
disagreeable look, and acquired a sort of crafty grandeur. He clapped
his hands together meditatively two or three times, and walked up and
down. The others stood together, watching him.

Then he sat down by the side of the lake, and, leaning on his sid