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she took two or three uncertain steps to-ward the tower, raising her hands toward it as she did so. By now others had joined her, and joined their terrors to hers, as the reality of height took possession of them, driving from their minds the two-dimensional world in which they had been brought up. Hysteria seized them, they dropped writhing to the bare earth, covering their faces with their hands. "Stand up! Stand up!" cried Jael, striding in and out between their heaving bodies like a fury. "Stand up and look up!" Some scrambled to their feet and shading their eyes forced their gaze to travel slowly up the crumbling masonry which had so miraculously been spared. To them, as to Jael, their first realization of the idea of height brought an overpowering sense of sin; they were doing the forbidden thing, and every faculty they had protested; but soon it established itself as something awe-inspiring and worshipful. Craning their necks toward the four round turrets of the summit, they felt they could never have enough of it. The beautiful Galilee chapel had gone; they had never seen it so they did not miss it; but a torn arch led into the tower, and through this Jael, the first to recover her volition, made her way. Here, in the confined space between the four walls, the effect of height was still more overwhelming; arcades of rounded arches, tier on tier, led--not to the roof, for the roof had long since crashed--but to a patch of sky at once darker and more luminous than the gray sky outside. At this they gazed, drawing deep breaths of longing, which, when their lungs were tired, expired in sighs. Somehow or other Jael found herself outside, at first panting and exultant, then with a crazy desire to dance and sing. Soon she was doing both, though to no steps or tune she knew. Others came out and joined her in the impromptu ballet; they took hands and there were just enough of them to make a ring around the base of the tower. Encircling it they danced and danced, all singing what they had come to think of as "the Height Song," picking up the words from each other by the power of instinctive transmission:  Hail to height! Which gives to sight  A new delight! Which gives to thought  A treasure, brought  From endless night. What if it made no sense? It had a meaning for them. On and on they danced, the women with streaming hair like Maenads, the men with athletic gestures of which their normal, ordinary bearing gave no hint whatever, until the current passing through their linked hands seemed to sweep away the barriers of individuality and leave a single personality, as homogeneous and indivisible as a wedding ring. What bliss was theirs! And what vital energy and endurance their bliss gave them! They felt themselves tireless, sustained by an inexhaustible inflowing strength; and when at last they did tire, they tired at the same moment: the current was switched off and they lay with twitching limbs on the caked, dun-colored earth as though the Angel of Death was passing over them. Above their prostrate bodies soared the tower, expressionless and unconcerned, unchanged to the eye but transfigured to the mind, like a vessel that was empty and now is full, like a god that has received a sacrifice.
    Chapter Eight
    JAEL was in too much pain to think, but between the bouts she dimly wondered whether the darkness meant she had been blinded. Or could it be the bodies pressing on her, crushing her face, where the pain was worst, and nearly stifling her? When she tried to move, the pains increased, when she lay still she was being suffocated-- "I'll get you out of this," she heard a voice say. But did it speak to her? And how could she be rescued? she asked herself, before she fainted. Then, later, was she stationary or was she moving? Was she on the earth or in the sky? Was she awake or dreaming? The pain seemed to have retreated to some distance from her; she knew it was there, she could almost touch it, a dull, red circle around her,