rls of
white light, which were the individuals, and plainly showed themselves
beneath the enveloping bodies, were delighted with existence and wished
only to enjoy it, but the green corpuscles were in a condition of
eternal discontent, yet, blind and not knowing which way to turn for
liberation, kept changing form, as though breaking a new path, by way of
experiment. Whenever the old grotesque became metamorphosed into the
new grotesque, it was in every case the direct work of the green atoms,
trying to escape toward Muspel, but encountering immediate opposition.
These subdivided sparks of living, fiery spirit were hopelessly
imprisoned in a ghastly mush of soft pleasure. They were being
effeminated and corrupted--that is to say, absorbed in the foul, sickly
enveloping forms.

Nightspore felt a sickening shame in his soul as he looked on at that
spectacle. His exaltation had long since vanished. He bit his nails, and
understood why Krag was waiting for him below.

He mounted slowly to the fifth window. The pressure of air against him
was as strong as a full gale, divested of violence and irregularity,
so that he was not for an instant suffered to relax his efforts.
Nevertheless, not a breath stirred.

Looking through the window, he was startled by a new sight. The sphere
was still there, but between it and the Muspel-world in which he was
standing he perceived a dim, vast shadow, without any distinguishable
shape, but somehow throwing out a scent of disgusting sweetness.
Nightspore knew that it was Crystalman. A flood of fierce light--but it
was not light, but passion--was streaming all the time from Muspel to
the Shadow, and through it. When, however, it emerged on the other side,
which was the sphere, the light was altered in character. It became
split, as by a prism, into the two forms of life which he had previously
seen--the green corpuscles and the whirls. What had been fiery spirit
but a moment ago was now a disgusting mass of crawling, wriggling
individuals, each whirl of pleasure-seeking will having, as nucleus, a
fragmentary spark of living green fire. Nightspore recollected the back
rays of Starkness, and it flashed across him with the certainty of truth
that the green sparks were the back rays, and the whirls the forward
rays, of Muspel. The former were trying desperately to return to their
place of origin, but were overpowered by the brute force of the latter,
which wished only to remain where they were.