yet another, a nameless and inexplicable impress, upon light itself. The lights were a mirage. Perhaps they existed a thousand miles away; perhaps not at all. He shivered.

And then he saw the object in the water, bobbing out there a hundred yards from the beach. Something white—an arm upraised. It was a human being, swimming toward him, and helplessly arm-weary by the looks of that desperate motion! It disappeared, appeared again, struggling more weakly.

Stephen plunged into the water, waded as far as he could, and swam the last fifty feet with a clumsy, unpracticed stroke, just in time to grasp the swimmer's hair.

And then he saw that the swimmer, going down for the last time, was a girl.

They rested upon the warm, white sand until she had recovered from her ordeal. Stephen prudently refrained from asking questions. He knew that she belonged to Flight Two or Flight Three, for he had seen her once or twice before this evening at the festival. Her short, platinum curls made her stand out in a crowd. She was not beautiful, and yet there was an essence of her being that appealed strongly to him; perhaps it was the lingering impression of her soft-tanned body in his arms as he had carried her to shore.

"You must have guessed that I was running away," she said presently.

"Running away? But how—where—"

"I know. But I had panicked, you see. I was already dreadfully homesick, and then came this horrid festival. I couldn't bear seeing us make such—such fools of ourselves. The women—well, it was as if we had reverted to animals. One of the men—I think he was a conjectural physicist by the name of Hesson—made advances to me. I'm no formalist, but I ran. Can you understand that?"

"I also disapprove of debauchery," Stephen said.

"I ran and ran until I came, at last, to this beach. I saw the lights of a city across the water. I am a strong swimmer and I struck out without stopping to reconsider. It was a horrible experience."

"You found nothing."

"Nothing—and worse than nothing. There is a place out there where heaven and hell, as well as the earth and the sky, are suspended. I suddenly found myself in a halfworld where all directions seemed to lead straight down. I felt myself slipping, sliding, flowing downward. And once I thought I saw a 

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