While they were talking it had become full day.  The mists had rolled away from the ground, and only the upper atmosphere remained fog-charged.  The desert of scarlet sand stretched in all directions, except one, where there was a sort of little oasis—­some low hills, clothed sparsely with little purple trees from base to summit.  It was about a quarter of a mile distant.

Joiwind had brought with her a small flint knife.  Without any trace of nervousness, she made a careful, deep incision on her upper arm.  Maskull expostulated.

“Really, this part of it is nothing,” she said, laughing.  “And if it were—­a sacrifice that is no sacrifice—­what merit is there in that? ...  Come now—­your arm!”

The blood was streaming down her arm.  It was not red blood, but a milky, opalescent fluid.

“Not that one!” said Maskull, shrinking.  “I have already been cut there.”  He submitted the other, and his blood poured forth.

Joiwind delicately and skilfully placed the mouths of the two wounds together, and then kept her arm pressed tightly against Maskull’s for a long time.  He felt a stream of pleasure entering his body through the incision.  His old lightness and vigour began to return to him.  After about five minutes a duel of kindness started between them; he wanted to remove his arm, and she to continue.  At last he had his way, but it was none too soon—­she stood there pale and dispirited.

She looked at him with a more serious expression than before, as if strange depths had opened up before her eyes.

“What is your name?”

“Maskull.”

“Where have you come from, with this awful blood?”

“From a world called Earth....  The blood is clearly unsuitable for this world, Joiwind, but after all, that was only to be expected.  I am sorry I let you have your way.”

“Oh, don’t say that!  There was nothing else to be done.  We must all help one another.  Yet, somehow—­forgive me—­I feel polluted.”

“And well you may, for it’s a fearful thing for a girl to accept in her own veins the blood of a strange man from a strange planet.  If I had not been so dazed and weak I would never have allowed it.”

“But I would have insisted.  Are we not all brothers and sisters?  Why did you come here, Maskull?”

He was conscious of a slight degree of embarrassment.  “Will you think it foolish if I say I hardly know?—­I came with those two men.  Perhaps I was attracted by curiosity, or perhaps it was the love of adventure.”

“Perhaps,” said Joiwind.  “I wonder...  These friends of yours must be terrible men.  Why did they come?”

“That I can tell you.  They came to follow Surtur.”

Her face grew troubled.  “I don’t understand it.  One of them at least must be a bad man, and yet if he is following Surtur—­or Shaping, as he is called here—­he can’t be really bad.”