She took me to a cell at some little distance. A deathly silence filled the room as we entered, and a deathly chill pervaded everything. The flickering light passed direct from the wall to the altar, and there upon it lay the cross, and on the cross another victim.
We drew nearer and gazed upon the dead. Such beauty as rested on her features seemed to refine the chamber.
“Will this fair creature change to a stunted dwarf?” I inquired.
Vestné shook her head.
“Sometimes you ask too much,” she replied. “She has learnt by some trickery to stand the punishment quietly. But that is the more profit to us. We absorb all this beauty; it belongs to us; then she may go back again, naked and unprotected as a new-born soul, into the world.”
I stooped and kissed the cold brow.
“Death is infectious,” said Vestné, laughing.
“So may life be,” I retorted.
After that we left the hateful prisons and returned to the watery vaults and to our boat.
We stepped in in silence, and she directed it back to the place whence we had started.