Then he experienced another surprise, for this person, although clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand.  In order to translate into words the sexual impression produced in Maskull’s mind by the stranger’s physical aspect, it is necessary to coin a new pronoun, for none in earthly use would be applicable.  Instead of “he,” “she,” or “it,” therefore “ae” will be used.

He found himself incapable of grasping at first why the bodily peculiarities of this being should strike him as springing from sex, and not from race, and yet there was no doubt about the fact itself.  Body, face, and eyes were absolutely neither male nor female, but something quite different.  Just as one can distinguish a man from a woman at the first glance by some indefinable difference of expression and atmospheres altogether apart from the contour of the figure, so the stranger was separated in appearance from both.  As with men and women, the whole person expressed a latent sensuality, which gave body and face alike their peculiar character....  Maskull decided that it was love—­but what love—­love for whom? it was neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted instinct of a female to obey her destiny.  It was as real and irresistible as these, but quite different.

As he continued staring into those strange, archaic eyes, he had an intuitive feeling that aer lover was no other than Shaping himself. it came to him that the design of this love was not the continuance of the race but the immortality on earth of the individual.  No children were produced by the act; the lover aerself was the eternal child.  Further, ae sought like a man, but received like a woman.  All these things were dimly and confusedly expressed by this extraordinary being, who seemed to have dropped out of another age, when creation was different.

Of all the weird personalities Maskull had so far met in Tormance, this one struck him as infinitely the most foreign—­that is, the farthest removed from him in spiritual structure.  If they were to live together for a hundred years, they could never be companions.

Maskull pulled himself out of his trancelike meditations and, viewing the newcomer in greater detail, tried with his understanding to account for the marvellous things told him by his intuitions.  Ae possessed broad shoulders and big bones, and was without female breasts, and so far ae resembled a man.  But the bones were so flat and angular that aer flesh presented something of the character of a crystal, having plane surfaces in place of curves.  The body looked as if it had not been ground down by the sea of ages into smooth and rounded regularity but had sprung together in angles and facets as the result of a single, sudden idea.  The face too was broken and irregular.  With his racial prejudices, Maskull found little beauty