"Aye," Croft said in a voice gone husky with emotion. It was the first time she had mentioned those astral meetings in a fashion so direct.
She eyed the new-formed substance in the glass before them. And suddenly she smiled. Face, eyes and lips, her whole fair being glowed. "They meet and mingle, melt into one another," she went on softly, and lifted his other arm and drew it about her form to meet the other. "Ah, Jason, thou messenger of Azil to me—that first night you lay in the palace, yet came and bade the presence of my spirit, and held me even so as you are holding me now; it was as though I forgot all else and knew thee only; as though I was not, save as a part of thee truly, save that I felt the strong fire of thy mouth."
And, again, on a night when the sky was cloudless and the triple moons had turned all the Palosian world to a dreamland of silvered plain and sea and mountain, Croft spoke to her of love. That night he drove her to the hangars, and they entered a machine. Up, up they whirled through an air aquiver with moonbeams; up, up to a land of dreams. And there between the heavens and the far-flung landscape they swam in a dream world of their own making, while the plane wheeled in wide spun circles, like some huge, dark bat against the skies.
"Behold Palos!" Croft cried to her above the roar of the whirling propeller, heard as it swept them forward, yet not seen. "Is it not lovely, is it not fair—this one of all the millions of stars on which we live? And yet why is it; for what purpose; why was it brought into existence, even as you and I, beloved, and sent spinning through the void from Zitu's hand, save for love; save that a million million men and women might find a spot whereon their spirits, the real they, should be given substance, in order that they should live and meet, and know one another, and—love. Wherefore is the body of man no more than the servant to give to love expression, since this is Zitu's plan: that no man's spirit is complete without the woman's, that no woman's spirit is complete without the man's; so that in his wisdom, each ever seeks the other to make it whole and satisfy its longing. Thus then is love assured, and life inspired."
He shut off the engine and began a long, slanting, coasting down a moonlighted, sloping path.
"Love," said the girl beside him, "love so great that it spans the space between the stars. And did I call you to me, without knowing, yet now it seems to me, beloved, that I should know and find some means to answer, no matter where you were."
In a long sweep Croft brought the plane back to the ground. And then without any verbal reply, he lifted her from her seat and bore her back to the motur in his arms.