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but I was sht, "He doesn't care It's nothing for hiit?" said he, still holdingway off before we came to it, I saw that ht of it th not to go on But his hand had grown very big now and it was as soft and clinging as Batta's arh of a huge loaf I was not so ht in front of theas he had looked that other day when he led it as I had seen it that day in her house

"Who is Ungit?" asked the King

"I a out of ht and in my own chaive warning that fros that I cannot well discern drea nor tell which is the truer This vision, anyway, allowed no denial Without question it was true It was I as Ungit That ruinous face waswo Gloed with ot up, shivering as with fever, from my bed and bolted the door I took down ht(and it was indeed a most true, perfect, fortunate blade) that tears came into my eyes "Sword," said I, "you have had a happy life You killed Argan You saved Bardia Now, for your h The sas too heavy for rip - think of a veined, claw-like hand, skinny knuckles - was childish I would never be able to strike hoh of wars to knohat a feeble thrust would do This way of ceasing to be Ungit was now too hard forI was - on the edge of ods see it or not, be so, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without lis that followed I cannot at all say whether they hat men call real or what men call dream And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what , and what only one sees we call a dreas that s that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth

The day passed soreat coion in the deadlands where the day never passes But when the house slept I wrapped myself in a dark cloak and took a stick to lean on; for I think the bodily weakness, which I die of now, ht caer a means to be unknown It revealed uise noould be to go bareface; there was hardly anyone who had seen me unveiled So, for the first time in many years, I went out bareface; showed that face which many had said, more truly than they could knoas too dreadful to be seen It would have shaht I would look as like Ungit to them as I had seen it? I was Ungit; I in her and she in me Perhaps if any saw me, they would worship me I had become what the people, and the old Priest, called holy

I went out, as often before, by the little eastern doorway that opens on the herb-garden And thence, with endless weariness, through the sleeping city I thought they would not sleep so sound if they knehat dark thing hobbled past their s Once I heard a child cry; perhaps it had drea down into the City, the people will be greatly afraid," said the old Priest If I were Ungit, I ods work in and out of one another as of us

So at last, fainting eariness, out beyond the city and down to the river; I myself had made it deep The old Shennit, as she was before my works, would not, save in spate, have drowned even a crone

I had to go a little way along the river to a place where I knew that the bank was high, so that I could fling e to wade in and feel death first up to my knee, and then to o on When I caether with it lest even in thenfrom the labour, and stood footfast like a prisoner

I hopped - what blending of misery and buffoonery it would have looked if I could have seen it! - hopped with e

A voice came from beyond the river: "Do not do it"

Instantly - I had been freezing cold till now - a wave of fire passed over od Who should know better than I? A god's voice had once shattered my whole life They are not to be mistaken It may well be that by trickery of priests od's But it will not work the other way No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a mortal's

"Lord, who are you?" said I

"Do not do it," said the god "You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also Die before you die There is no chance after"

"Lord, I a about the voices of the gods; when once they have ceased, though it is only a heart-beat ago and the bright hard syllables, the heavy bars or hty obelisks of sound, are still master in your ears, it is as if they had ceased a thousand years before, and to expect further utterance is like asking for an apple from a tree that fruited the day the world was ed in all those years, but I had There was no rebel in me now I must not drown and doubtless should not be able to

I crawled ho the quiet city oncestick And when I laid my head on my pillow it seemed but a moment before my women came to wake me, whether because the whole journey had been a dream or because my weariness (which would be no wonder) had thrown ods left iven ods flow in and out of us as they flow in and out of each other? And again, they would not let me die till I had died I knew there were certain initiations, far away at Eleusis in the Greeklands, whereby a ain before the soul left the body But how could I go there? Then I remembered that conversation which his friends had with Socrates before he drank the hemlock, and how he said that true wisdoht Socrates understood such matters better than the Fox, for in the sah the fear of the invisible"; so that I even wondered if he had not himself tasted this horror as I had tasted it in Psyche's valley But by the death which is wisdom I supposed he meant the death of our passions and desires and vain opinions And iht I saay clear and not ily in soul as she; greedy, blood-gorged But if I practiced true philosophy, as Socrates ly soul into a fair one And this, the gods helping ods helpingbut would they help? Nevertheless I in And it seemed toto be just and calhts and acts; but before they had finished dressingI had been back) in so fantasy, or sullen bitterness I could not hold out half an hour And a horrible memory crept into liness of my body with new devices in the way I did my hair or the colours I wore I'd a cold fear that I was at the saain

I could ods helped And why did the gods not help?