"First know that you yourself can do nothing." The man spoke with soft, slow emphasis. "No created being has power to do that kind of work."
"What has?" Skag asked.
"A Power that we are not worthy to name," the man answered, with reverence. "If it accepts your reason why she should stay—if your love is found to be without tarnish of self—it will work her restoration; not otherwise.
"Make yourself still. Give your mind to the apprehension of her nature—till your mind has come to be as if it were not. . . . Peace!"
The man dropped his head a moment, before he moved to stand at the food of her bed. With his eyes on her face he leaned, laying his palms over her feet; then, seeming to float backward to the wall, he sank slowly—to sit as the Hindus do.
The sense of his strength seemed to fill the whole room. It was the last outward thing Skag was aware of.
. . . It was as if Skag had passed through eons of ages trying to put away all the tender yearning anguish of his love for Carlin. He came to know her as a beneficent entity of high voltage—needed in more than one place.
It must be that he should make it possible for her to serve here, more potently than there—else she could not be held back. With all his strength, he would try.
"Son," the mystic's voice rang out, "now give yourself to your love for her—with your strength!"
Presently a warm glow flowed up into Skag's feet, filling his person and extending his physical sentiency into her body. That body was utterly bound in a strange vise—very heavy; as if every particle of every part were separately frozen.