s 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. Halfway down the
cliff face a little spring was encountered. Its water was colourless,
transparent, but gaseous. As soon as Maskull had satisfied his thirst
he felt himself different. His surroundings were so real to him in their
vividness and colour, so unreal in their phantom-like mystery, that he
scrambled downhill like one in a winter's dream.

When they reached the plain he saw in front of them an interminable
forest of tall trees, the shapes of which were extraordinarily foreign
looking. The leaves were crystalline and, looking upward, it was as if
he were gazing through a roof of glass. The moment they got underneath
the trees the light rays of the sun continued to come through--white,
savage, and blazing--but they were gelded of heat. Then it was not hard
to imagine that they were wandering through cool, bright elfin glades.

Through the forest, beginning at their very feet an avenue, perfectly
straight and not very wide, went forward as far as the eye could see.

Maskull wanted to talk to his travelling companion, but was somehow
unable to find words. Panawe glanced at him with an inscrutable
smile--stern, yet enchanting and half feminine. He then broke the
silence, but, strangely enough, Maskull could not make out whether he
was singing or speaking. From his lips issued a slow musical
recitative, exactly like a bewitching adagio from a low toned stringed
instrument--but there was a difference. Instead of the repetition and
variation of one or two short themes, as in music, Panawe's theme was
prolonged--it never came to an end, but rather resembled a conversation
in rhythm and melody. And, at the same time, it was no recitative, for
it was not declamatory. It was a long, quiet stream of lovely emotion.

Maskull listened entranced, yet agitated. The song, if it might be
termed song, seemed to be always just on the point of becoming clear and
intelligible--not with the intelligibility of words, but in the way one
sympathises with another's moods and feelings; and Maskull felt that
something important was about to be uttered, which would explain
all that had gone before. But it was invariably postponed, he ne