They came to the head of a rough staircase, leading down the cliffside.  It resembled the one by which he had come up; but this descended to the Wombflash Forest.

“That is your path,” said Catice, “and I shall not come any farther.”

Maskull detained him.  “Say just this, before we part company—­why does pleasure appear so shameful to us?”

“Because in feeling pleasure, we forget our home.”

“And that is—­”

“Muspel,” answered Catice.

Having made this reply, he disengaged himself, and, turning his back, disappeared into the darkness.

Maskull stumbled down the staircase as best he could.  He was tired, but contemptuous of his pains.  His uninjured probe began to discharge matter.  He lowered himself from step to step during what seemed an interminable time.  The rustling and sighing of the trees grew louder as he approached the bottom; the air became still and warm.

He at last reached level ground.  Still attempting to proceed, he began to trip over roots, and to collide with tree trunks.  After this had happened a few times, he determined to go no farther that night.  He heaped together some dry leaves for a pillow, and immediately flung himself down to sleep.  Deep and heavy unconsciousness seized him almost instantly.

Chapter 13

THE WOMBFLASH FOREST

He awoke to his third day on Tormance.  His limbs ached.  He lay on his side, looking stupidly at his surroundings.  The forest was like night, but that period of the night when the grey dawn is about to break and objects begin to be guessed at, rather than seen.  Two or three amazing shadowy shapes, as broad as houses, loomed up out of the twilight.  He did not realise that they were trees, until he turned over on his back and followed their course upward.  Far overhead, so high up that he dared not calculate the height, he saw their tops glittering in the sunlight, against a tiny patch of blue sky.

Clouds of mist, rolling over the floor of the forest, kept interrupting his view.  In their silent passage they were like phantoms flitting among the trees.  The leaves underneath him were sodden, and heavy drops of moisture splashed onto his head from time to time.

He continued lying there, trying to reconstruct the events of the preceding day.  His brain was lethargic and confused.  Something terrible had happened, but what it was he could not for a long time recollect.  Then suddenly there came before his eyes that ghastly closing scene at dusk on the Sant plateau—­Spadevil’s crushed and bloody features and Tydomin’s dying sighs....  He shuddered convulsively, and felt sick.

The peculiar moral outlook that had dictated these brutal murders had departed from him during the night, and now he recognised what he had done!  During the whole of the previous day he seemed to have been labouring under a series of heavy enchantments.  First Oceaxe had enslaved him, then Tydomin, then Spadevil, and lastly Catice.  They had forced him to murder and violate; he had guessed nothing, but had imagined that he was travelling as a free and enlightened stranger.  What was this nightmare journey for—­and would it continue, in the same way? ...