had a ghost of a voice—a sweet whisper. She spoke to him and he heard himself answering. But what either of them said, or in what language, he had no idea. It was a murmur of voices heard in the distance in an opium dream. He felt detached from them. Only one thing emerged clearly—her name was Rosala. He was lying relaxed and at peace in a purple twilight.
Then she reached down and laid a finger on his shoulder. He couldn’t feel the touch of it. He seemed unable to make any movement himself. Although he felt as though he were still reclining on his back, his body drifted gently upwards. He was floating on air, her finger still on his shoulder.
So he must be a ghost, too, and this must be the next world. It was strange, but not frightening. Indeed, it became amusing when Rosala began to push him along through the air, still using only the one finger, as though he were some kind of human balloon.
They came to a garden which even in this murky light looked lovely. There were wide lawns, and flowers drained of brightness by the dim illumination, and an ornamental pool which seemed full of black ink. There were many statues at the pool’s edge and spaced about the lawns. It looked odd. Some of them were plainly as substantial as marble, but the rest were as ghostly and tenuous as Rosala herself, and as the pale oblong they were now approaching, which was the side of a many-windowed house.
The main door was large, open, and flanked by a pair of indubitably solid sculptures of naked women, life-size and life-like. As he passed between them, he saw they both had the same face.
It was Rosala’s.
Then he passed into a blinding white light and closed his eyes against the dazzle of it. Almost at once he fell asleep. He dreamed, and the dreams were confusing, but seemed very real while they lasted. Intermittently, there came patches of unconsciousness where there were no dreams.
He was always glad to emerge from them and find Rosala there. She was the one constant in a giddy flux. And so she remained unchanging—until he found he could change her.
Within the house she never wore the robe he’d naively assumed to be a shroud. She was as unadorned as her twin likenesses guarding the door. Her figure was well rounded and pleasing, but rather too full for his taste, like the Velasquez Venus. Watching her, he let his imagination slim her somewhat at the waist and hips. And, lo, she became slimmer before his eyes. This was an exciting discovery, especially as it seemed far more vivid and real than the erotic fantasies of adolescence. But he had disproportioned her. So then he had to reduce her bosom, then fine down her limbs to slim elegance.
Sculpturing in flesh was a fascinating occupation. She didn’t seem to mind it in the least, and was always smiling at him and talking to him. They had long conversations. It was queer, but he was never able to recollect what they were about. Indeed, while they were in progress, he hardly knew what he was saying. He was never conscious of eating or drinking, but he supposed he must be absorbing sustenance for he felt neither hunger nor thirst. Also, he supposed he must now be capable of movement, for he kept finding himself in different parts of the house, though he had no memory of having walked to them. He had only a vague conception of the house. He knew it was extensive, and that the biggest room, where they spent most of the time, was a kind of studio. Paintings hung on the walls and stood on easels. There were several large blocks of stone, some partially carved.
Rosala was both painter and sculptress, yet he never saw her handle a brush or chisel.
It was strange that he knew her name, but couldn’t recall his own. He had a suspicion that this was because he hadn’t a full title to a name. He wasn’t a complete personality, only a detached fragment of one. The rest— the bulk—of him was elsewhere. Who, and where, was the real he? It was a puzzle without solution in a timeless, meaningless existence.
Until suddenly, at some dateless point and without the slightest warning, full consciousness struck him. There was a sunburst in his mind. In the strong white light which permeated Rosala’s house all objects at once became hard, brilliant, colorful, as though he were seeing them under the influence of mescalin.
He knew he was Alexander Sherret. He remembered clearly his adventures on the trek to Na-Abiza up to the point where he fell and crashed his head against something hard. After that, things remained hazy.
That part of him who had had long talks with Rosala was still absent, things in some blind alley of the memory. However, here he stood now in the center of the studio, in slippers and a blue velvety robe with a golden cord gathering in the waist. He felt vitally alive and strong. He walked across the glassy floor, which contained intertwining ribbons of colors, moving slowly like snakes, in its depths, to a wall mirror.
He looked well too, and had grown an impressive, rust-red beard. He fingered it, and touched more tenderly the still sore place above his right ear. A slight lump remained there.
A painting on an easel caught his attention. It sent a small shock of disquiet through him. In purple monochrome it stylistically displayed the pattern of a man trapped, grotesquely twisted and crushed amid a cluster of tall, smooth pillars. Although contorted in pain and fright, the face was recognizably his. The pillars, presumably, were simplified versions of the trees.
As he regarded it, unconsciously he began a new habit —a nervous tugging at his beard.
A pair of ivory-white, perfectly molded arms stole around his shoulders from behind. A honeyed voice whispered in his ear, in Amaran with an attractive, unfamiliar accent,
“Ah, my Ulysses, you said you never wanted to look at it again. But it fascinates you, doesn’t it? Art is stronger than
