“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.