ith us, but do not send us away from you."

Then they knelt, and bowed their golden head before us.

We had never thought of that which we did. We bent to raise the Golden
One to their feet, but when we touched them, it was as if madness had
stricken us. We seized their body and we pressed our lips to theirs. The
Golden One breathed once, and their breath was a moan, and then their
arms closed around us.

We stood together for a long time. And we were frightened that we had
lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is possible to
men.

Then we said:

"Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in
solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and
our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that
there is joy between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own
world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own."

Then we walked on into the forest, their hand in ours.

And that night we knew that to hold the body of a woman in our arms is
neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of
men.

We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek no end.
But each day added to the chain of days between us and the City is like
an added blessing.

We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than we need
for our food; we find water and fruit in the forest. At night, we choose
a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around it. We sleep in the
midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not attack us. We can see their
eyes, green and yellow as coals, watching us from the tree branches
beyond. The fires smolder as a crown of jewels around us, and smoke
stands still in the air, in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep
together in the midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us,
their head upon our breast.

Some day, we shall stop and build a house, when we shall have gone far
enough. But we do not have to hasten. The days before us are without
end, like the forest.

We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it seems so
clear and so simple. When questions come to puzzle us, we walk faster,
then turn and forget all things as we watch the Golden One following.
The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches
apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is
like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowi