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"The advantage of not being cruel and selfish, dear Maskull." He threw the fruit away and flushed again. Joiwind looked into his swarthy, bearded face without embarrassment and slowly smiled. "Have I said too much? Have I been too familiar? Do you know why you think so? It's because you are still impure. By and by you will listen to all language without shame."
"What are these strange relations between you?" demanded Digrung, eying him with suddenly aroused suspicion. Maskull stared back in a sort of bewilderment. "Good God! You don't doubt your own sister. That pure angel!" Tydomin caught hold of him delicately. "I don't know Joiwind, but, whoever she is and whatever she's like, I know this she's more fortunate in her friend than in her brother.
I hurried away, and did not pause again that day. "In Poolingdred I met Joiwind. We walked and talked together for a month, and by that time we found that we loved each other too well to part." Panawe stopped speaking. "That is a fascinating story," remarked Maskull. "Now I begin to know my way around better. But one thing puzzles me." "What's that?"
The explanation of the phenomenon was evidently that the water at this spot found chemical affinities in the upper air, and consequently forsook the ground. "Now let us drink," said Joiwind. She threw herself unaffectedly at full length on the sand, face downward, by the side of the brook, and Maskull was not long in following her example.
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.
"All creatures that resemble Shaping must of necessity resemble one another." "Then sporting is the blind will to become like Shaping?" "Exactly." "It is most wonderful," said Maskull. "Then the brotherhood of man is not a fable invented by idealists, but a solid fact." Joiwind looked at him, and changed colour. Panawe relapsed into sternness. Maskull became interested in a new phenomenon.
Joiwind turned her head, and laughed so joyously that all her teeth flashed in the sunlight. They landed in a few more minutes on a promontory of black rock. The water on Maskull's garment and body evaporated very quickly. He gazed upward at the towering mountain, but at that moment some strange movements on the part of Panawe attracted his attention.
"There's no need," replied Maskull. "The way is plain." "But talking shortens the road." Maskull turned to go. Joiwind pulled him around toward her softly. "You won't think badly of other women on my account?" "You are a blessed spirit," answered he. She trod quietly to the inner extremity of the cave and stood there thinking. Panawe and Maskull emerged into the open air.
"From a world called Earth.... The blood is clearly unsuitable for this world, Joiwind, but after all, that was only to be expected. I am sorry I let you have your way." "Oh, don't say that! There was nothing else to be done. We must all help one another. Yet, somehow forgive me I feel polluted."
On the skyline, at right angles to the direction in which they were walking, appeared a chain of mountains, apparently about forty miles distant. One, which was higher than the rest, was shaped like a cup. Maskull would have felt inclined to believe he was travelling in dreamland, but for the intensity of the light, which made everything vividly real. Joiwind pointed to the cup-shaped mountain.
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