e suddenly into the quiet, a black shadow dipped low over the
rooftops, and Smith, too late, realized that he stood defenseless in
full view of the searching ships. There was only one way out, and that
was too fantastic to put faith in, but he had no time to hesitate. With
one leap he plunged full into the midst of the shadow of the tree of
life.

Its tracery flowed round him, molding its pattern to his body. And
outside the boundaries everything executed a queer little sidewise dip
and slipped in the most extraordinary manner, like an optical illusion,
into quite another scene. There was no intervention of blankness. It was
as if he looked through the bars of a grille upon a picture which
without warning slipped sidewise, while between the bars appeared
another scene, a curious, dim landscape, gray as if with the twilight of
early evening. The air had an oddly thickened look, through which he saw
the quiet trees and the flower-spangled grass of the place with a queer,
unreal blending, like the landscape in a tapestry, all its outlines
blurred.

In the midst of this tapestried twilight the burning whiteness of the
girl he had followed blazed like a flame. She had paused a few steps
away and stood waiting, apparently quite sure that he would come after.
He grinned a little to himself as he realized it, knowing that curiosity
must almost certainly have driven him in her wake even if the necessity
for shelter had not compelled his following.

She was clearly visible now, in this thickened dimness--visible, and
very lovely, and a little unreal. She shone with a burning clarity, the
only vivid thing in the whole twilit world. Eyes upon that blazing
whiteness, Smith stepped forward, scarcely realizing that he had moved.

Slowly he crossed the dark grass toward her. That grass was soft
under-foot, and thick with small, low-blooming flowers of a shining
pallor. Botticelli painted such spangled swards for the feet of his
angels. Upon it the girl's bare feet gleamed whiter than the blossoms.
She wore no garment but the royal mantle of her hair, sweeping about her
in a cloak of shining darkness that had a queer, unreal tinge of purple
in that low light. It brushed her ankles in its fabulous length. From
the hood of it she watched Smith coming toward her, a smile on her pale
mouth and a light blazing in the deeps of her moonstone eyes. She was
not blind now, nor frightened. She stretched out her hand to him
confidently.

"It