Before he realised what she was about to do, she threw her tentacle round his neck, like another arm.  He offered no resistance to its cool pressure.  The contact of her soft flesh with his own was so moist and sensitive that it resembled another kind of kiss.  He saw who it was that embraced him—­a pale, beautiful girl.  Yet, oddly enough, he experienced neither voluptuousness nor sexual pride.  The love expressed by the caress was rich, glowing, and personal, but there was not the least trace of sex in it—­and so he received it.

She removed her tentacle, placed her two arms on his shoulders and penetrated with her eyes right into his very soul.

“Yes, I wish to be pure,” he muttered.  “Without that what can I ever be but a weak, squirming devil?”

Joiwind released him.  “This we call the ‘magn,’” she said, indicating her tentacle.  “By means of it what we love already we love more, and what we don’t love at all we begin to love.”

“A godlike organ!”

“It is the one we guard most jealously,” said Joiwind.

The shade of the trees afforded a timely screen from the now almost insufferable rays of Branchspell, which was climbing steadily upward to the zenith.  On descending the other side of the little hills, Maskull looked anxiously for traces of Nightspore and Krag, but without result.  After staring about him for a few minutes he shrugged his shoulders; but suspicions had already begun to gather in his mind.

A small, natural amphitheatre lay at their feet, completely circled by the tree-clad heights.  The centre was of red sand.  In the very middle shot up a tall, stately tree, with a black trunk and branches, and transparent, crystal leaves.  At the foot of this tree was a natural, circular well, containing dark green water.

When they had reached the bottom, Joiwind took him straight over to the well.

Maskull gazed at it intently.  “Is this the shrine you talked about?”

“Yes.  It is called Shaping’s Well.  The man or woman who wishes to invoke Shaping must take up some of the gnawl water, and drink it.”

“Pray for me,” said Maskull.  “Your unspotted prayer will carry more weight.”

“What do you wish for?”

“For purity,” answered Maskull, in a troubled voice.

Joiwind made a cup of her hand, and drank a little of the water.  She held it up to Maskull’s mouth.  “You must drink too.”  He obeyed.  She then stood erect, closed her eyes, and, in a voice like the soft murmurings of spring, prayed aloud.

“Shaping, my father, I am hoping you can hear me.  A strange man has come to us weighed down with heavy blood.  He wishes to be pure.  Let him know the meaning of love, let him live for others.  Don’t spare him pain, dear Shaping, but let him seek his own pain.  Breathe into him a noble soul.”

Maskull listened with tears in his heart.

As Joiwind finished speaking, a blurred mist came over his eyes, and, half buried in the scarlet sand, appeared a large circle of dazzlingly white pillars.  For some minutes they flickered to and fro between distinctness and indistinctness, like an object being focused.  Then they faded out of sight again.