Slowly the curtain shook and its folds dissolved as I moved against the
wind. The clouds lifted; and by degrees I grew aware that I was
standing on the barren moor. Night was stretched around to the horizon,
where straight ahead a grey bar shone across the gloom. I pressed on
towards it. The heath was uneven under my feet, and now and then I
stumbled heavily; but still I held on. For it seemed that I must get to
this grey bar or die a second time. All my muscles, all my will, were
strained upon this purpose.

Drawing nearer, I observed that a wave-like motion kept passing over
this brighter space, as it had passed over the mirror. The glimmer
would be obscured for a moment, and then re-appear. At length a gentle
acclivity of the moor hid it for a while. My legs positively raced up
this slope, and upon the summit I hardly dared to look for a moment,
knowing that if the light were an illusion all my hope must die with it.

But it was no illusion. There was the light, and there, before my feet,
lay a sable sheet of water, over the surface of which the light was
playing. There was no moon, no star in heaven; yet over this desolate
tarn hovered a pale radiance that ceased again where the edge of its
waves lapped the further bank of peat. Their monotonous wash hardly
broke the stillness of the place.

The formless longing was now pulling at me with an attraction I could
not deny, though within me there rose and fought against it a horror
only less strong. Here, as in the Blue Room, two souls were struggling
for me. It was the soul of Philip Cardinnock that drew me towards the
tarn and the soul of Samuel Wraxall that resisted. Only, what was the
thing towards which I was being pulled?