"You!" she said at last. The silvery chime of her thought held the quality of a gasp. Her stunned incredulity was echoed by the other presences before the pool. "He is the strange one--he is here!" "He of the great will has come!" Then the silvery chiming again, stronger now. "You followed me here, man of the other aspect? Were you able so easily to penetrate the veil?" "I don't know just how I got here," Bryan returned. "But I do know that this is where I wanted to be." She seemed to grasp the implications of the thought, for a sudden delight stirred in her. Yet for the moment her wonder remained dominant. "I do not understand how this can be. The others could not penetrate the veil without the aid of the Vessel. It is as though they were somehow bound to their aspect of existence--bound as you, man of the mighty will, are not.... But why have you come?" His answer was grave, deliberate. "Partly to ask you to stop the harm you have been causing in my world, Leeta." "Harm?" A silvery peal of shock burst from her. "I ... I do not understand." "You took something from those men in my world, Leeta--something they could not live without. And because of this, they died." "Died! But the pool could not incarnate them into this aspect. The vital force escaped. I thought it returned to its shell in the other aspect." Bryan clearly understood the meaning behind the terms she used. He shook his head. "The vital force did not return--not once, Leeta. The shells died." She looked stricken. "I had not thought that happened when the vital force escaped. I had been certain that it returned through the veil, drawn back by its bonds with the shell.... If it did not return, then it must have perished here." The realization was one she found startling, dismaying. Bryan nodded slowly. "It perished in this aspect, just as the energy projection of one of your winged creatures perished in mine. For I assume that the creature did perish, Leeta." "Yes," she whispered. "It was a thing I did not understand. But now...." Her thought faded unhappily. Sorrow misted her eyes. * * * * * He dropped down beside her at the edge of the pool. For the moment, driven by his intense purpose, he forgot that he was somehow immaterial, a projection. He forgot the strangeness of that bizarre other-world garden and the tensely watching shapes nearby. There was only Leeta and himself. That was all that mattered. Earnestness heavily underscored his thought. "Leeta, you must stop what you have been doing. You know now it has caused the deaths of those men in my world. And there is another reason, Leeta--danger. My people will be watching for you to appear again. They will try to destroy you." She shook her head with a mournful determination. "But I cannot stop. I have a duty to fulfill that is greater than any harm I might cause--greater even than my own life." "What do you mean, Leeta? What is this duty?"