ouched him lightly.

"What do you see, Maskull?"

"Muspel-light."

"I see nothing."

The light shot up, until Maskull scarcely knew where he stood. It
burned with a fiercer and stranger glare than ever before. He forgot the
existence of Sullenbode. The drum beats grew deafeningly loud. Each beat
was like a rip of startling thunder, crashing through the sky and making
the air tremble. Presently the crashes coalesced, and one continuous
roar of thunder rocked the world. But the rhythm persisted--the
four beats, with the third accented, still came pulsing through the
atmosphere, only now against a background of thunder, and not of
silence.

Maskull's heart beat wildly. His body was like a prison. He longed to
throw it off, to spring up and become incorporated with the sublime
universe which was beginning to unveil itself.

Sullenbode suddenly enfolded him in her arms, and kissed
him--passionately, again and again. He made no response; he was unaware
of what she was doing. She unclasped him and, with bent head and
streaming eyes, went noiselessly away. She started to go back toward the
Mornstab Pass.

A few minutes afterward the radiance began to fade. The thunder died
down. The moonlight reappeared, the stone posts and the hillside were
again bright. In a short time the supernatural light had entirely
vanished, but the drum taps still sounded faintly, a muffled rhythm,
from behind the hill. Maskull started violently, and stared around him
like a suddenly awakened sleeper.

He saw Sullenbode walking slowly away from him, a few hundred yards
off. At that sight, death entered his heart. He ran after her, calling
out.... She did not look around. When he had lessened the distance
between them by a half, he saw her suddenly stumble and fall. She did
not get up again, but lay motionless where she fell.

He flew toward her, and bent over her body. His worst fears were
realised. Life had departed.

Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman
grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful
to him as at that moment.

He remained beside her for a long time, on his knees. He wept--but,
between his fits of weeping, he raised his head from time to time, and
listened to the distant drum beats.

An hour passed--two hours. Teargeld was now in the south-west. Maskull
lifted Sullenbode's dead body on to his shoulders, and started to walk
toward the Pass. He cared no more f