Maskull listened with tears in his heart.
As Joiwind finished speaking, a blurred mist came over his eyes, and, half buried in the scarlet sand, appeared a large circle of dazzlingly white pillars. For some minutes they flickered to and fro between distinctness and indistinctness, like an object being focused. Then they faded out of sight again.
“Is that a sign from Shaping?” asked Maskull, in a low, awed tone.
“Perhaps it is. It is a time mirage.”
“What can that be, Joiwind?”
“You see, dear Maskull, the temple does not yet exist but it will do so, because it must. What you and I are now doing in simplicity, wise men will do hereafter in full knowledge.”
“It is right for man to pray,” said Maskull. “Good and evil in the world don’t originate from nothing. God and Devil must exist. And we should pray to the one, and fight the other.”
“Yes, we must fight Krag.”
“What name did you say?” asked Maskull in amazement.
“Krag—the author of evil and misery—whom you call Devil.”
He immediately concealed his thoughts. To prevent Joiwind from learning his relationship to this being, he made his mind a blank.
“Why do you hide your mind from me?” she demanded, looking at him strangely and changing colour.
“In this bright, pure, radiant world, evil seems so remote, one can scarcely grasp its meaning.” But he lied.
Joiwind continued gazing at him, straight out of her clean soul. “The world is good and pure, but many men are corrupt. Panawe, my husband, has travelled, and he has told me things I would almost rather have not heard. One person he met believed the universe to be, from top to bottom, a conjurer’s cave.”
“I should like to meet your husband.”
“Well, we are going home now.”
Maskull was on the point of inquiring whether she had any children, but was afraid of offending her, and checked himself.
She read the mental question. “What need is there? Is not the whole world full of lovely children? Why should I want selfish possessions?”
An extraordinary creature flew past, uttering a plaintive cry of five distinct notes. It was not a bird, but had a balloon-shaped body, paddled by five webbed feet. It disappeared among the trees.
Joiwind pointed to it, as it went by. “I love that beast, grotesque as it is—perhaps all the more for its grotesqueness. But if I had children of my own, would I still love it? Which is best—to love two or three, or to love all?”
“Every woman can’t be like you, Joiwind, but it is good to have a few like you. Wouldn’t it be as well,” he went on, “since we’ve got to walk through that sun-baked wilderness, to make turbans for our heads out of some of those long leaves?”
She smiled rather pathetically. “You will think me foolish, but every tearing off of a leaf would be a wound in my heart. We have only to throw our robes over our heads.”
“No doubt that will answer the same purpose, but tell me—weren’t these very robes once part of a living creature?”
“Oh, no—no, they are the webs of a certain animal, but they have never been in themselves alive.”
“You reduce life to extreme simplicity,” remarked Maskull meditatively, “but it is very beautiful.”
Climbing back over the hills, they now without further ceremony began their march across the desert.
They walked side by side. Joiwind directed their course straight toward Poolingdred. From the position of the sun, Maskull judged their way to lie due north. The sand was soft and powdery, very tiring to his naked feet. The red glare dazed his eyes, and made him semi-blind. He was hot, parched, and tormented with the craving to drink; his undertone of pain emerged into full consciousness.
“I see my friends nowhere, and it is very queer.”
“Yes, it is queer—if it is accidental,” said Joiwind, with a peculiar intonation.
“Exactly!” agreed Maskull. “If they had met with a mishap, their bodies would still be there. It begins to look like a piece of bad work to me. They must have gone on, and left me.... Well, I am here, and I must make the best of it, I will trouble no more about them.”
“I don’t wish to speak ill of anyone,” said Joiwind, “but my instinct tells me that you are better away from those men. They did not come here for your sake, but for their own.”
They walked on for a long time. Maskull was beginning to feel faint. She twined her magn lovingly around his waist, and a strong current of confidence and well-being instantly coursed through his veins.
“Thanks, Joiwind! But am I not weakening you?”
“Yes,” she replied, with a quick, thrilling glance. “But not much—and it gives me great happiness.”
Presently they met a fantastic little creature, the size of a new-born lamb, waltzing along on three legs. Each leg in turn moved to the front, and so the little monstrosity proceeded by means of a series of complete rotations. It was vividly coloured, as though it had been dipped into pots of bright blue and yellow paint. It looked up with small, shining eyes, as they passed.
Joiwind nodded and smiled to it. “That’s a personal friend of mine, Maskull. Whenever I come this way, I see it. It’s always waltzing, and always in a hurry, but it never seems to get anywhere.”
“It seems to me that life is so self-sufficient here that there is no need for anyone to get anywhere. What I don’t quite understand is how you manage to pass your days without ennui.”
“That’s a strange word. It means, does it not, craving for excitement?”
“Something of the kind,” said Maskull.
“That must be a disease brought on by rich food.”
