“’Perhaps it is, young man, but you have never learned that, and never will.  For you the world will continue to wear a noble, awful face.  You will never rise above mysticism....  But be happy in your own way.’

“Before I realised what he was doing, he jumped tranquilly from the path, down into the empty void.  He crashed with ever-increasing momentum toward the valley below.  I screeched, flung myself down on the ground, and shut my eyes.

“Often have I wondered which of my ill-considered, juvenile remarks it was that caused this sudden resolution on his part to commit suicide.  Whichever it might be, since then I have made it a rigid law never to speak for my own pleasure, but only to help others.

“I came eventually to the Marest.  I threaded its mazes in terror for four days.  I was frightened of death, but still more terrified at the possibility of losing my sacred attitude toward life.  When I was nearly through, and was beginning to congratulate myself, I stumbled across the third extraordinary personage of my experience—­the grim Muremaker.  It was under horrible circumstances.  On an afternoon, cloudy and stormy, I saw, suspended in the air without visible support, a living man.  He was hanging in an upright position in front of a cliff—­a yawning gulf, a thousand feet deep, lay beneath his feet.  I climbed as near as I could, and looked on.  He saw me, and made a wry grimace, like one who wishes to turn his humiliation into humour.  The spectacle so astounded me that I could not even grasp what had happened.

“‘I am Muremaker,’ he cried in a scraping voice which shocked my ears.  ’All my life I have sorbed others—­now I am sorbed.  Nuclamp and I fell out over a woman.  Now Nuclamp holds me up like this.  While the strength of his will lasts I shall remain suspended; but when he gets tired—­and it can’t be long now—­I drop into those depths.’

“Had it been another man, I would have tried to save him, but this ogre-like being was too well known to me as one who passed his whole existence in tormenting, murdering, and absorbing others, for the sake of his own delight.  I hurried away, and did not pause again that day.

“In Poolingdred I met Joiwind.  We walked and talked together for a month, and by that time we found that we loved each other too well to part.”

Panawe stopped speaking.

“That is a fascinating story,” remarked Maskull.  “Now I begin to know my way around better.  But one thing puzzles me.”

“What’s that?”

“How it happens that men here are ignorant of tools and arts, and have no civilisation, and yet contrive to be social in their habits and wise in their thoughts.”

“Do you imagine, then, that love and wisdom spring from tools?  But I see how it arises.  In your world you have fewer sense organs, and to make up for the deficiency you have been obliged to call in the assistance of stones and metals.  That’s by no means a sign of superiority.”