I knew also that she regarded her body as a broken and negligible thing, and that her mind had concentrated on persuading me to undertake, and enabling me to understand, an errand which the accident had interrupted, and which was of a very urgent nature. So I sat there at the cave-mouth, while the sun rose clear from the hateful vivid green of the forest, that was still vocal with fear and excitement, while I slowly took my first and very difficult lesson in the new world I had entered. “And now,” she thought, “if that be all, and you understand, I shall be very glad to die. You will not touch me when I am dead? If you are a beast that needs such food, you will find that the jelly in the tentacles will supply you. You must wait here till the twilight.” And then she turned over, with a movement of surprising ease in the broken limbs, and curled up, and I knew that she had left the cave. And I sat there thinking of all she had told me, and felt a great loneliness, and a great fear. CHAPTER IV THE OPAL WAY I sat there a long time, trying to reconstruct her tale, and to find some possible explanation of its apparent paradoxes. Why should I stay there till the twilight came? I had learnt that where I sat I was in the very shadow of death. I knew that the way was long, and the message I had undertaken was of the utmost urgency. Some reason for delay there had been, but it was like a dream which eludes waking thought. And how, in light or dark, could I cross the great chasm where the pavement ended? I had asked her this, but she had replied as though she did not understand my difficulty. The bridge was where it was not. There was no meaning in that. Perhaps my physical limitations were beyond her understanding. Surely, if I tried that road by night, though I should avoid the terrors on either hand, I must fall into the abyss beyond, and perish. I resolved that I would go forward, at least as far as the path was clear, and, at the worst, I knew that there were other cavities, such as this one, in which I could take refuge with no greater danger than was behind me here. But again my resolve faltered. I _knew_ that there was some reason against my going, though my thought could not recall it. Why should I go by night? Patiently I recalled the visions which had crossed my mind as our thoughts encountered.