She looked stricken. "I had not thought that happened when the vital force escaped. I had been certain that it returned through the veil, drawn back by its bonds with the shell.... If it did not return, then it must have perished here." The realization was one she found startling, dismaying.
Bryan nodded slowly. "It perished in this aspect, just as the energy projection of one of your winged creatures perished in mine. For I assume that the creature did perish, Leeta."
"Yes," she whispered. "It was a thing I did not understand. But now...." Her thought faded unhappily. Sorrow misted her eyes.
He dropped down beside her at the edge of the pool. For the moment, driven by his intense purpose, he forgot that he was somehow immaterial, a projection. He forgot the strangeness of that bizarre other-world garden and the tensely watching shapes nearby. There was only Leeta and himself. That was all that mattered.
Earnestness heavily underscored his thought. "Leeta, you must stop what you have been doing. You know now it has caused the deaths of those men in my world. And there is another reason, Leeta—danger. My people will be watching for you to appear again. They will try to destroy you."
She shook her head with a mournful determination. "But I cannot stop. I have a duty to fulfill that is greater than any harm I might cause—greater even than my own life."
"What do you mean, Leeta? What is this duty?"
"I shall tell you. But first—you have seen something of this valley? You have seen that it is beautiful?"
"Very beautiful, Leeta."