“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.”