'Yes, you fear - you fear!' broke out Krag, in a highpitched, scraping voice. 'You eternal loller!'
Maskull kept looking from one to the other in amazement. There seemed to be a determined hostility between the two, which indicated an intimate previous acquaintance.
They set off through a wood, keeping close to its border, so that for a mile or more they were within sight of the long, narrow lake that flowed beside it. The trees were low and thin; their dolm-coloured leaves were all folded. There was no underbrush - they walked on clean, brown earth, A distant waterfall sounded. They were in shade, but the air was pleasantly warm. There were no insects to irritate them. The bright lake outside looked cool and poetic.
Gangnet pressed Maskull's arm affectionately. 'If the bringing of you from your world had fallen to me, Maskull, it is here I would have brought you, and not to the scarlet desert. Then you would have escaped the dark spots, and Tormance would have appeared beautiful to you.'
'And what then, Gangnet? The dark spots would have existed all the same.'
'You could have seen them afterward. It makes all the difference whether one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows.'
'A clear eye is the best. Tormance is an ugly world, and I greatly prefer to know it as it really is.'
'The devil made it ugly, not Crystalman. These are Crystalman's thoughts, which you see around you. He is nothing but Beauty and Pleasantness. Even Krag won't have the effrontery to deny that.'
'It's very nice here,' said Krag, looking around him malignantly. 'One only wants a cushion and half a dozen houris to complete it.'
Maskull disengaged himself from Gangnet. 'Last night, when I was struggling through the mud in the ghastly moonlight - then I thought the world beautiful.'
'Poor Sullenbode!' said Gangnet sighing.
'What! You knew her?'
'I know her through you. By mourning for a noble woman, you show your own nobility. I think all women are noble.'
'There may be millions of noble women, but there's only one Sullenbode.'
'If Sullenbode can exist,' said Gangnet, 'the world cannot be a bad place.'
'Change the subject… The world's hard and cruel, and I am thankful to be leaving it.'
'On one point, though, you both agree,' said Krag, smiling evilly. 'Pleasure is good, and the cessation of pleasure is bad.'
Gangnet glanced at him coldly. 'We know your peculiar theories, Krag. You are very fond of them, but they are unworkable. The world could not go on being, without pleasure.'
'So Gangnet thinks!' jeered Krag.
They came to the end of the wood, and found themselves overlooking a little cliff. At the foot of it, about fifty feet below, a fresh series of lakes and forests commenced. Barey appeared to be one big mountain slope, built by nature into terraces. The lake along whose border they had been travelling was not banked at the end, but overflowed to the lower level in half a dozen beautiful, threadlike falls, white and throwing off spray. The cliff was not perpendicular, and the men found it easy to negotiate.
At the base they entered another wood. Here it was much denser, and they had nothing but trees all around them. A clear brook rippled through the heart of it; they followed its bank.
'It has occurred to me,' said Maskull, addressing Gangnet, 'that Alppain may be my death. Is that so?'
'These trees don't fear Alppain, so why should you? Alppain is a wonderful, life-bringing sun.'
'The reason I ask is - I've seen its afterglow, and it produced such violent sensations that a very little more would have proved too much.'
'Because the forces were evenly balanced. When you see Alppain itself, it will reign supreme, and there will be no more struggling of wills inside you.'
'And that, I may tell you beforehand, Maskull,' said Krag, grinning, 'is Crystalman's trump card.'
'How do you mean?'
'You'll see. You'll renounce the world so eagerly that you'll want to stay in the world merely to enjoy your sensations.'
Gangnet smiled. 'Krag, you see, is hard to please. You must neither enjoy, nor renounce. What are you to do?'
Maskull turned toward Krag. 'It's very odd, but I don't understand your creed even yet. Are you recommending suicide?'
Krag seemed to grow sallower and more repulsive every minute. 'What, because they have left off stroking you?' he exclaimed, laughing and showing his discoloured teeth.
'Whoever you are, and whatever you want,' said Maskull, 'you seem very certain of yourself.'
'Yes, you would like me to blush and stammer like a booby, wouldn't you! That would be an excellent way of destroying lies.'
Gangnet glanced toward the foot of one of the trees. He stooped and picked up two or three objects that resembled eggs.
'To eat?' asked Maskull, accepting the offered gift.
'Yes, eat them; you must be hungry. I want none myself, and one mustn't insult Krag by offering him a pleasure - especially such a low pleasure.'
Maskull knocked the ends off two of the eggs, and swallowed the liquid contents. They tasted rather alcoholic. Krag snatched the remaining, egg out of his hand and flung it against a tree trunk, where it broke and stuck, a splash of slime.
'I don't wait to be asked, Gangnet… Say, is there a filthier sight than a smashed pleasure?'
Gangnet did not reply, but took Maskull's arm.
After they had alternately walked through forests and descended cliffs and slopes for upward of two hours, the landscape altered. A steep mountainside commenced and continued for at least a couple of miles, during which space the land must have dropped nearly four thousand feet, at a practically uniform gradient. Maskull had seen nothing like this immense slide of country anywhere. The hill slope carried an enormous forest on its back. This forest, however, was different from those they had hitherto passed through. The leaves of the trees were curled in sleep, but the boughs were so close and numerous that, but for the fact that they were translucent, the rays of the sun would have been completely intercepted. As it was, the whole forest was flooded with light, and this light, being tinged with the colour of the branches, was a soft and lovely rose. So gay, feminine, and dawnlike was the illumination, that Maskull's spirits immediately started to rise, although he did not wish it.
He checked himself, sighed, and grew pensive.
'What a place for languishing eyes and necks of ivory, Maskull!' rasped Krag mockingly. 'Why isn't Sullenbode here?'
Maskull gripped him roughly and flung him against the nearest tree. Krag recovered himself, and burst into a roaring laugh, seeming not a whit discomposed.
'Still what I said - was it true or untrue?'
Maskull gazed at him sternly. 'You seem to regard yourself as a necessary evil. I'm under no obligation to go on with you any farther. I think we had better part.'
Krag turned to Gangnet with an air of grotesque mock earnestness.
'What do you say - do we part when Maskull pleases, or when I please?'
'Keep your temper, Maskull,' said Gangnet, showing Krag his back. 'I know the man better than you do. Now that he has fastened onto you there's only one way of making him lose his hold, by ignoring him. Despise him - say nothing to him, don't answer his questions. If you refuse to recognise his existence, he is as good as not here.'
'I'm beginning to be tired of it all,' said Maskull. 'It seems as if I shall add one more to my murders, before I have finished.'
'I smell murder in the air,' exclaimed Krag, pretending to sniff. 'But whose?'
'Do as I say, Maskull. To bandy words with him is to throw oil on fire.'
'I'll say no more to anyone… When do we get out of this accursed forest?'
'It's some way yet, but when we're once out we can take to the water, and you will be able to rest, and think.'
