They walked over to Crimtyphon's body, and Maskull hoisted it on to his shoulders. It weighed heavier than he had thought. Tydomin did not offer to assist him to adjust the ghastly burden.
She crossed the isthmus, followed by Maskull. Their path lay through sunshine and shadow. Branchspell was blazing in a cloudless sky, the heat was insufferable - streams of sweat coursed down his face, and the corpse seemed to grow heavier and heavier. Tydomin always walked in front of him. His eyes were fastened in an unseeing stare on her white, womanish calves; he looked neither to right nor left. His features grew sullen. At the end of ten minutes he suddenly allowed his burden to slip off his shoulders on to the ground, where it lay sprawled every which way. He called out to Tydomin.
She quickly looked around.
"Come here. It has just occurred to me" - he laughed - "why should Ibe carrying this corpse - and why should I be following you at all?
What surprises me is, why this has never struck me before."She at once came back to him. "I suppose you're tried, Maskull. Let us sit down. Perhaps you have come a long way this morning?""Oh, it's not tiredness, but a sudden gleam of sense. Do you know of any reason why I should be acting as your porter?" He laughed again, but nevertheless sat down on the ground beside her.
Tydomin neither looked at him nor answered. Her head was half bent, so as to face the northern sky, where the Alppain light was still glowing. Maskull followed her gaze, and also watched the glow for a moment or two in silence.
"Why don't you speak?" he asked at last.
"What does that light suggest to you, Maskull?""I'm not speaking of that light."
"Doesn't it suggest anything at all?"
"Perhaps it doesn't. What does it matter?""Not sacrifice?"
Maskull grew sullen again. "Sacrifice of what? What do you mean?"Hasn't it entered your head yet," said Tydomin, looking straight in front of her, and speaking in her delicate, hard manner, "that this adventure of yours will scarcely come to an end until you have made some sort of sacrifice?"He returned no answer, and she said nothing more. In a few minutes'