ight 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. Joi