"'What bright babes had Lilith and Adam—
'Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
'Radiant sons and glittering daughters....'"
"The man who wrote that knew only half the truth," said Shairn. "Let's go in."
They found a sheltered spot where the sun was warm. Absently, Shairn smoothed a patch of sand with her palm, and rumpled it again. After a while she said,
"What sort of a man are you, Michael? What do you do? How do you live?"
He looked at her keenly. "Do you really want to know? All right, I'll tell you. I'm a man who has never been satisfied. I've never had a job I could stay with very long. I'm a flier by trade, but even that seems a dull and rather childish business. And why? Because I'm too good for any of it."
He laughed, not without a certain cruel humor. "Don't ask me in what way I'm too good. I seem to be unusually healthy, but that's only important to me. My brain-power has never set the world on fire. I have no tendency to genius. In fact, a suspicion creeps upon me that I'm just not good enough. Whichever way it is, there has always been something lacking, either in me or the world."
Shairn nodded, and again he was conscious of a queer wisdom in her that did not fit with her youth. She smiled, a small thing full of secrets.
"And you thought that if you learned the origin of your blood you would understand yourself."