“It could give him a satisfaction,” Ooldra said. “With various exceptions of individuals or circumstances, animals are joyful or grieve when something pleasant or unpleasant happens; a human being’s enjoyment of, for instance, a meeting with his beloved—is heightened by outside and very abstract factors—say, for how long a time they have been parted from each other. Higher beings depend almost entirely for their joy or grief upon the abstract factors—time, space, the emotion of others. Joys and griefs which are purely physical—such as food, hunger—matter not really at all to them. A sudden sharp violet seen beside a sudden soft purple can be to them what intense physical sexual ecstasy is to a human—and I don’t mean they’re ‘sublimating’ it.”

I stared at her before the doubt in my mind resolved itself to me.

That was all intensely interesting—but how much she hates Zerd! The malice glittered in her silver eyes as she brought out this measured information against him. “Surely, Ooldra, you don’t really think he is a higher being whose joys—who is a kind of super-sadist? But it’s impossible—he’s as earthly, almost as animal, as anyone could be. He’s almost wholesome from that point of view. He even jeers at the supernatural.”

She sighed.

“Yes, for someone so intelligent he is so animal that, knowing he is not a man, there is only one explanation.”

“What?”

“Life is perilous.”

“Oh, yes, you’ve told me all that before . .

“No, that is peril of the world; there is a larger perilousness, a desperation which is the cause and the goal of all things—not in life, but in Life.” The second time she said the word there was a dreadful stir in her voice. “It is true, Cija, irrevocably true that it is possible for a being—a human being or a greater creature too, to lose his soul.”

I had forgotten how big the sky is outside the forest. It is quite amazing.

However, there is not a very far-flung low horizon. This is because while we were in the forest the mountains were getting nearer and nearer and now, when at last we have seen them for the first time, they are already large and near. The sun beats down upon their white crags.

Already the sun is a penance.

The jungle is only a week behind us, and already the General’s deference to his princess is noticeably a little less.