And it drew him. It compelled him. It was the voice of love—the voice of the affinity of the ages, soundless, as the spinning of the planets down the grooveless tracks of time—a blind thing, a mad thing, beyond all thinking in its sweetness—the voice of atom to atom—of the soft wind to the pollen—the voice of the bird to its mate—of the maiden to her lover—the ceaseless song of creation—the voice of God to man.
"Jason—O my beloved!"
It filled Croft's being. It engulfed him. It caught him up and carried him he cared not whither on the tide of a swift irresistible flood. It made of his astral substance no more than a straw swept up and off and about in an eddy of compelling force. It was more like that ceaseless urge which had drawn him from the Dog Star always while yet he dwelt on earth.
It carried Croft out of the palace and across the Central Sea. It swept him across Bithur, with its plains and night-wrapped woods. It drew him above the camp of the Mazzerian army, and inside that tent where his body lay stretched out upon the ground.
And then Croft understood—that Naia had accomplished for herself, what heretofore had been by him induced—that her spirit's love—her desire for knowledge, had enabled her soul to break the body's bonds. That as she suggested she might, in a former conversation, she had found the way to visit him in dreams.
Yes, Croft knew all this in a blinding flash of comprehension. Because—there in the little tent, its auric fires paling and glowing, its soft arms twined about his unconscious body, lay Naia's astral form.
She had come to find him. Suddenly it seemed to Croft that he might have known. And all at once he was glad, with a great unreasoning gladness that when she came, she had found him here alone, like this rather than in Kalamita's tent.
Then very softly, "Beloved," he let steal forth the soul call.
She heard. She lifted her head from where it had lain upon his breast. She turned its wide eyes toward him, and saw him and rose swiftly toward him, and into his embrace.
"Jason—I came to Atla, and could not find you. And I sought you—sought you. What is the meaning of this?"