only in so far as it led further and further forward and a little higher and higher. He had ceased to think vocally for the past fifteen minutes; marvellous thoughts came in increasing numbers, but it was unnecessary up here, where there was so much room, to group them in sequence. There did seem, though, at the back of his mind, dimly apprehended, a thought that wanted to come forward, yet could not get through. It translated itself into an unpleasant sensation in order to find an easier path, a sensation as of something forgotten that made one want to click the fingers and press the tongue against the teeth-tk, tk, like that. Christopher could hear the click of his fingers, but was unaware that as he repeated the motion his thumb and index were fully two inches apart. Tk, th— what was this that had been forgotten and that could not get through?

tk

Here was God-indubitably: it was like going to the top of the mountain. He had known all along that when once those grimacing voices had been left behind he would hear THE VOICE, just so, like this, its music getting ever louder and clearer as one climbed forward and upward. His own music came back to him, but it could not compare with this, though it was the same-but this The thoughts fell away abruptly, nothing now remained but the mighty music. Tk . . . tk . . . Oxy . . . tk . . . tk . . . Oxyg

There was something intruding on the music. Something very small but significant, annoying, something that must be eliminated. Tk . . . th He could hear it now in spite of that glorious thundering. It was a mere word. Just listen for a second more and then it will fade away. Tk . . th . . . Oxygen. Oh, was that all?

'Oxygen,' Christopher

shouted, but the shout emerged from his throat a whisper. There was so much room up here. And suddenly he understood with extraordinary clearness, not that he had forgotten the oxygen and was going to die, for surely that was exactly what he had intended and there was no need for the intrusion of that ignoble clicking, none at all; he understood that he was about to enter into the kingdom and the power and the glory, and they into him-that, borne upward on the wings of those unceasing harmonies rapidly becoming visible, taking shape as their anticipated forms, he was going to . . .

For he had now cast off all superfluities, he was now transcendental, soaring quite free and yet fused with all eternity.

He was now lying crumpled up over the stick. Purple blood was trickling from the nostril he had declined to cover with the protective mask -purple swiftly crimsoning on the glass edge of the clock face he had smashed in his fall.

The Makara continued faithfully to bear her

passenger further and further, but ever so slowly a little upward, towards the forbidden heights whence soon she would wrench him, swooping through space, downward and backward, downward and backward-where he belonged.

Chapter 13

BACK TO THE FUTURE

All science properly so-called, by which I under-
stand systematic knowledge under the guidance
of the principle of sufficient reason, can never
reach its final goal; for it is not concerned with
the inmost nature of the world; it cannot get
beyond the idea.

SCHOPENHAUER-' THE WORLD AS WILL
AND IDEA.'
I

NICOLETTE still slept. Bruce walked across to where she lay, looked for a moment, then paced up and down the room once or twice. He went to the window and on to the balcony. There was no sound but a faint rustling. As he gazed out, the gathering clouds parted for a moment, and through their frayed pearly edges he imagined he saw, outlined against the moonlit blue above them, a moving, dwindling spot. Then they closed again.

Mutely, he wished the boy well on his last voyage of discovery. He had always been so unhappy. Yet he had no more sought to investigate the cause of his misery than he would avail himself of the facile cure. Sad and proud individualist, he had been as self-opinionated as if he had been self-created. Never had he turned to inquire of the woman who had made him-inadequately-nor of those who stood beside and

behind her, the ancestry and the blood whence they had both sprung. It was difficult for Bruce, who had long trained himself to view everything sculpturally, architecturally, to enter mentally into Christopher's flat, pictorial, one-sided point of view. He was penetrated too deeply by his own theories of interdependence and linkage; he was a biologist.

It was fine-the way the boy had gone. Bruce could respond emotionally to an act like that; a clean gesture of cleavage, possible only to one who saw life as Christopher did-canvas through which the knife of will could slash sharply.

Bruce never doubted that he would not come back, but as the slow moments passed his regret became keener. There was a deal to be said for self-ending, from all points of view. And he had enough sympathy to understand the appalling terror with which certain minds viewed the insoluble riddle of existence, the necessity they felt to invent an Ultimate, a resolving harmonious end. He himself was secretly sustained by complete confidence in the continued expansion of the human intellect; he accepted gladly all scraps of evidence which seemed to point to the fact that its power of discovery was kinetic. Quite clearly, if one assumed just a little, thought moved. It soared and fell, like the oceans. What, in the end, might be left of the ground it was ceaselessly attacking-whether the new tracts it