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136 nence business right away or you'll be all tied up again before you know it. Good-night to you."

And then he went down to Grange's bar and stayed there long. For the knowledge of the young god Frey was heavy on him.

His lagging feet halted him at the mess-room door before he went upstairs that night. Tempest was there; smoking, and dreaming over a ragged little book of Norse verse. Dick watched him through the door, and his heart lightened. Tempest was sure; sure as the moon and the stars, and as high above earth.

He looked up at Dick's tread, waving his pipe. "Come on, come on," he said. "I've got an idea here."

It was the impetuous manner of the days when they had loved without doubt or pain. The other man felt the call of it to his heart again, and his eyes were sombre as he dropped into a chair and stretched his legs. Life had broken him, but he felt a shudder of deadly fear at the thought that it might break Tempest.

"You remember your Edda geography, Dick?" Tempest was glowing with his idea. "Niflheim, the land of snow eternal in the north, and Muspelheim, the land of quenchless fire in the south"

"And Ginungagap, the bottomless abyss separating them," yawned Dick.

"Yes. But don't you see why? That's the germ of it, and it never struck me before. It was there so they couldn't meet in an earthly way. You remember how those two great forces did meet? In mid-air, with all of coarseness sloughed off them. The cold clear spray of Niflheim and the transparent pure heat of Muspelheim. Refined and purified they met in mid-air and made life. And that life made the world and was the world. Understand? There's no way to the higher life along the earthly plane—that chucks us into the abyss. But the soul-essence—the thing distilled away from the heat of the blood and the barren ice of selfishness—My God! That is the thing! That is life!"

He walked the room now with his light nervous steps. His head was flung back and his eyes shone. Dick thought suddenly of a Browning-sick girl who used to call Tempest