At length Kalus raised himself, understanding, and better able to handle the heightened state of his senses, feeling once more like a peaceful sea from which the gale has passed, softened and grateful. 'Thank you,' he said to her. He took a deep breath. 'Are you all right?' There was something more than womanly concern in her voice. An intense curiosity had taken hold of her, as if she too pondered some great riddle of her past. The questions twirled like serpents about the object she now surveyed. 'Yes. What are you thinking?' 'I've been looking at the mirror,' she said, gazing at it still. 'All this time we've taken the altar, and the visions of that night, for granted, perhaps because the questions were too deep, and they frightened us..... But what does it all mean, Kalus? What's BEHIND it?' Turning toward the singular apparatus, which like her he had left aside until this night as simply too much to contemplate, he was again drawn by its silent mystery. But in his more earthy, less ethereal way, he took the question literally. What lay BEHIND it? And stirred at last to physical action, he took from his pouch the round hammer-stone and approached the blue-black mirror, which seemed to waver in strange patterns before him. As the woman watched, he tapped first along the rock immediately surrounding the glass, then above, and around the altar. There could be no doubt: the sounds were hollow. Some hidden chamber lay beyond. He turned to his companion. 'Shall I break the glass?' Again she felt an inner turmoil. But her need to know was so great..... 'Yes.' He shielded his eyes with his arm, much as he had on the night when together they heard the Voice. . .and hurled his stone into the heart of it. With a crash the mirror burst. And when she dared to open her eyes again, her first reaction was disappointment. Only a hole remained, lined about the edges with jagged bits of glass. But forbidding and tooth-like as these appeared, they could with care be removed, and the passage rendered safe. This Kalus set out to do, protecting his hand with a small skin and pulling out the pieces one by one, unable yet to penetrate the gloom of what lay beyond. 'Bring me the torch,' he said to her. But now the girl became suddenly timid. Seeing the result of her handiwork, she wondered if in her restless curiosity she had not tempted the undoing of all Faith. 'It's all right,' he said, somehow knowing her thoughts. 'If a belief can be so easily destroyed, by the least physical reality, it is not worthy of the hope we place in it. I would rather put my faith in something that can be trusted.' Her eyes pleaded. 'I know,' he said more quietly. 'Nothing is that simple. But the miracle of the Voice is not banished yet. Bring me the torch, and we'll see what lies beyond.'