Part 23 (1/2)

'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.'

'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all.

If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom, science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!'

'It arose before--it would arise again.'

'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. I see it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, they would be taught--'

'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!'

'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The tlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the glound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord G.o.d walking all among the tlees of the folests.'

As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she is near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked at me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it suddenly struck me what a n.o.ble temple of a brow the creature has, almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like a bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon she shakes backward with her head.

'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called you Clodagh?'

'No? Tell me?'

'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called Clodagh: and she was a....'

'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's wife, flom all the others?'

'Well, by their faces....'

'But there must have been many faces--all alike--'

'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.'

'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive any face, except yours and mine.'

'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.'

'What was a goose like?'

'It was a thing like a b.u.t.terfly, only larger, and it kept its toes always spread out, with a skin stretched between.'

'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you saying that your lover, Clodagh, was?'

'She was a Poisoner.'

'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?'

'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should become my--lover, too.'

'I am your lover already: for I love you.'

'What, girl?'