“So you do ask me to die.  Though how you can make use of my body is difficult to understand.”

“No, I don’t ask you to die.  You will go on living.”

“How is it possible without a body?”

Tydomin gazed at him earnestly.  “There are many such beings, even in your world.  There you call them spirits, apparitions, phantoms.  They are in reality living wills, deprived of material bodies, always longing to act and enjoy, but quite unable to do so.  Are you noble-minded enough to accept such a state, do you think?”

“If it’s possible, I accept it,” replied Maskull quietly.  “Not in spite of its heaviness, but because of it.  But how is it possible?”

“Undoubtedly there are very many things possible in our world of which you have no conception.  Now let us wait till we get home.  I don’t hold you to your word, for unless it’s a free sacrifice I will have nothing to do with it.”

“I am not a man who speaks lightly.  If you can perform this miracle, you have my consent, once for all.”

“Then we’ll leave it like that for the present,” said Tydomin sadly.

They proceeded on their way.  Owing to the subsidence, Tydomin seemed rather doubtful at first as to the right road, but by making a long divergence they eventually got around to the other side of the newly formed chasm.  A little later on, in a narrow copse crowning a miniature, insulated peak, they fell in with a man.  He was resting himself against a tree, and looked tired, overheated, and despondent.  He was young.  His beardless expression bore an expression of unusual sincerity, and in other respects he seemed a hardy, hardworking youth, of an intellectual type.  His hair was thick, short, and flaxen.  He possessed neither a sorb nor a third arm—­so presumably he was not a native of Ifdawn.  His forehead, however, was disfigured by what looked like a haphazard assortment of eyes, eight in number, of different sizes and shapes.  They went in pairs, and whenever two were in use, it was indicated by a peculiar shining—­the rest remained dull, until their turn came.  In addition to the upper eyes he had the two lower ones, but they were vacant and lifeless.  This extraordinary battery of eyes, alternatively alive and dead, gave the young man an appearance of almost alarming mental activity.  He was wearing nothing but a sort of skin kilt.  Maskull seemed somehow to recognise the face, though he had certainly never set eyes on it before.

Tydomin suggested to him to set down the corpse, and both sat down to rest in the shade.

“Question him, Maskull,” she said, rather carelessly, jerking her head toward the stranger.

Maskull sighed and asked aloud, from his seat on the ground, “What’s your name, and where do you come from?”

The man studied him for a few moments, first with one pair of eyes, then with another, then with a third.  He next turned his attention to Tydomin, who occupied him a still longer time.  He replied at last, in a dry, manly, nervous voice.  “I am Digrung.  I have arrived here from Matterplay.”  His colour kept changing, and Maskull suddenly realised of whom he reminded him.  It was of Joiwind.