htful time. It's a delicious world, and just everything that one
would think it to be; but if we were to stop here we should be
committing one of the greatest of crimes, perhaps the greatest, that
ever was committed within the limits of the Solar System."

"My dear Zaidie, what, in the name of what we used to call morals on the
Earth, _do_ you mean?"

"Just this," she replied, leaning a little towards him in her
deck-chair. "These people, half angels, and half men and women, welcomed
us after we dropped through their cloud-veil, as friends; we were a
little strange to them, certainly, but still they welcomed us as
friends. They had no suspicions of us; they didn't try to poison us or
blow us up as those wretches on Mars did. They're just like a lot of
grown-up children with wings on. In fact they're about as nearly angels
as anything we can think of. They've taken us into their palaces,
they've given us, as one might say, the whole planet. Everything was
ours that we liked to take. You know we have two or three hundredweight
of precious stones on board now, which they would make me take just
because they saw my rings.

"We've been living with them ten days now, and neither you nor I, nor
even Murgatroyd, who, like the old Puritan that he is, seems to see sin
or wrong in everything that looks nice, has seen a single sign among
them that they know anything about what we call sin or wrong on Earth.
There's no jealousy, no selfishness. In short, no envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness; no vice, or meanness, or cheating, or any of
the abominations of the planet Terra, and _we come from that planet_. Do
you see what I mean now?"

"I think I understand what you're driving at," said Redgrave; "you mean,
I suppose, that this world is something like Eden before the fall, and
that you and I--oh--but that's all rubbish you know. I've got my own
share of original sin, of course, but here it doesn't seem to come in;
and as for you, the very idea of _you_ imagining yourself a feminine
edition of the Serpent in Eden. Nonsense!"

She got up out of her chair and, leaning over his, put her arm round his
shoulder. Then she said very softly:

"I see you understand what I mean, Lenox. That's just it--original sin.
It doesn't matter how good you think me or I think you, but we have it.
You're an Earth-born man and I'm an Earth-born woman, and, as I'm your
wife, I can say it plainly. We may think a good bit of each other, but