sire up with me in my arms, both of us reeling with
my unsteadiness.

"I do not give you up," I said, my speech hoarse and difficult. "I claim
you, now, and after. And my claim is good, because I pay."

Desire exclaimed something. What, I do not know. Her voice was lost in
the triumphant conviction that I was right. She was free, and the
freedom was my gift to her. I was not vanquished, but victor. The life I
paid was not a penalty, but a price.

Her face was uplifted to mine as she clung to me; then my weight glided
through her arms and I fell back in my chair.

I was alone amid blackness and desolation that poured past me like the
wind above the world.

* * * * *

For the last time, I opened my eyes on the gray shore at the foot of the
Barrier. I, pygmy indeed, stood again before the colossal wall whose
palisades reared up beyond vision and stretched away beyond vision on
either side.

I was alone here. No whisper of taunt or menace, no presence of horror
troubled me. Opposite me, the Breach that split the cliff showed as a
shadowed canon, empty except of dread. Far out behind me the sea that
was like no sea of earth gathered itself beneath its eternal mists as a
tidal wave draws and gathers. With folded arms I stood there, waiting
for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm me in their flood.
I waited in awe and solemn expectancy, beyond fear or hope.

But now I became aware of a new doubleness of experience. Here on the
Frontier, I was between the worlds, yet I also saw the room in the house
left behind. I saw myself as an unconscious body reclined in a chair
beside the hearth. Desire Michell knelt on the floor beside me, her
hands grasping my arms, her gaze fixed on my face, her hair spilling its
shining lengths across my knees. Phillida was huddled in a chair, crying
hysterically. Vere apparently had been trying to force some stimulant
upon the man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while I watched he
reluctantly rose from bending above the figure and set a glass upon the
table. I echoed his sigh. Life was good.

The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable distances. The roar
of the waters' thunderous approach blended with the heat and flash of
storm all about the house into which I looked.

"He dies," Desire spoke, her voice level and calm. "Has it not been so
with all who loved the daughters of my race these two centuries past?
Yet never did one