ndow-space. The fragrance persisted; the ghastly
smell of mould and corruption was gone. But I wanted light for all that!
Reaching for the lamp beside me on its stand, I found the little chain.
I felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have
meant light; but no answering brightness sprang up.

Instead, across the dark came a voice; a voice low-pitched, soft without
weakness, keen with exultation:

"Victory! Victory! You have no need of light--who conquered in darkness!
The Enemy has fled. It has covered the Unspeakable Eyes from the eyes of
a man. By the will of a man Its will has been forbidden. It has dragged
Itself back to the Barrier and cowers there for this time. Oh, soldier
on the dreadful Frontier, be proud, putting off your armor tonight! Be
proud, and rest."

Those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible, may
gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first
experience, and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess to a
moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed
her braid of hair into my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how
did she know of the Thing's visit to me? I had not spoken nor uttered a
cry throughout Its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that
silent struggle between It and me, or of my escape so narrowly won. How,
unless she too----?

I groped for a glass of water left on my stand. I drank, and felt my dry
throat relax.

"Who are you?" I asked.

A sigh trembled toward me.

"I am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world, as a
traveler stands outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not
enter, and feeling the winter about her."

"Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool," I said bruskly. "You are
a woman. The woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not
long ago, to save herself from capture!"

"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than the One which came for
you a while since."

"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever
mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it?"

The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool
melancholy.

"Real? What is real?" she challenged me. "Turn to the sciences that you
should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a
million years men have vowed you touch empty air. They saw and felt it
empty. But now a child knows air swarms with li