m, and many a strange fact of life he picked up from the
circumambient apparent emptiness.
It was with this far-seeing sense that Druga now noticed a glowing,
golden vibrance spreading an invisible, but terrifically felt glory, all
across the northern horizon. He turned the horse's head toward that
glory, no more able to avoid the decision than is a moth the flame.
What it was that he sensed he did not surely know, but his memory
supplied him with vague and haunting clues which he could not quite drag
out into the light of reason. It did not stand to reason, but there it
was ahead, the lure of woman augmented by some magic into a glory
visible as sunlight, strong as some great whirlpool of energy, drawing
him resistlessly on and on.
Many a mile later, Druga came to a point where he could see with his
eyes on ahead and into the shining core of that field of golden
vibrance.
"One of the universal poles of life!" cried Druga. In his studies Druga
had learned that just as the world has a North and South magnetic pole,
so does the universe have opposite poles of life-magnetic-energy. One of
these is female, and inducts in all life a female nature; the other is
male and inducts in all life a male nature, just as the North and South
pole induct in all iron and in kindred matter a North and South magnetic
pole.
"It is no wonder it draws me, it is the force which makes all life
attractive to all other life...."
Druga knew that there was no use his trying to resist the attraction any
more than a compass could resist pointing north. So he rode onward into
the glory, musing that it was strange this universal pole of infinite
space should, in its drifting, have crossed his own path upon this
planet.
As he neared the center of the increasing ecstasy, Druga's mind and body
became cleaned of all desires but one, and that was to reach the exact
center and there remain. Along with others, his affection for Feronia
was burned away, leaving him helpless in the grip of this emotion
greater by far than any other.
Glory, golden ecstatic glory, poured through him in a titanic flood, and
nearer and nearer he came to the shining central core of the mighty
field of universal energy.
* * * * *
As he came at last to clear vision of the core, he saw floating there a
vast, circular disk of golden hue, and upon the disk a tremendous
mansion. Beneath the disk was only the shining golden air, and it
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