"Everyone gave their approval. A hut was prepared for us. People ran hither and thither gathering the finest skins and furs for us, and the softest chewed leather, and we were ushered into this place in silence, and I lay back down on the fur beneath me, the skin of a mountain goat, long and soft.

" 'God, what do you want me to do!' I asked aloud. There came no answer. There was only the silence and the darkness in the hut, and then the arms of a Daughter of Men around me, luscious and loving and full of tenderness and passion, that mystery, thatcombination, that purely living miracle, tenderness and lust rolling and rolling into one."

Memnoch stopped. He seemed exhausted suddenly. He rose and again walked to the bank of the sea. He stood in the soft sand and pebbles. I saw the outline of his wings flash for a moment, perhaps exactly the way the woman had seen it, and then he was merely the large figure, with his shoulders hunched as he stood with his back to me, his face apparently buried in his hands.

"Memnoch, what happened!" I said. "Surely God didn't leave you there! What did you do? What happened the next morning when you woke up?"

He gave a sigh and turned around finally. He walked slowly back to the boulder, and sat down again.

"By morning, I had known her a half dozen times and lay half dead, and that in itself was another lesson. But I had no thought whatsoever on what I might do. While she'd slept, I had prayed to God, I had prayed to Michael and to the other angels. I had prayed and prayed, asking what I should do.

"Can you guess who answered me?" he asked.

"The souls in Sheol," I said.

"Yes, precisely! Those are the spirits who answered. How could you know? Those are the spirits—the strongest souls of Sheol who heard my prayers to the Creator and heard the impetus and essence of my cries and my excuses and my pleas for mercy and forgiveness and understanding—heard all of it, absorbed it, drank it up, as they did the spiritual yearnings of their human and living children. And by the time the sun rose, by the time all the men of the group had started to gather, I knew one thing only:

"Whatever happened to me, whatever was the will of God, the souls of Sheol would never be the same! They had learnt too much from the voice of this Angel fallen into Matter who had thoughtlessly cried to Heaven and to God.