Joiwind smiled.  “If you were to regard nature as the husband, and Panawe as the wife, Maskull, perhaps everything would be explained.”

Maskull reflected.

“On Earth,” he said after a minute, “men like Panawe are called artists, poets, and musicians.  Beauty overflows into them too, and out of them again.  The only distinction is that their productions are more human and intelligible.”

“Nothing comes from it but vanity,” said Panawe, and, taking the crystal out of Maskull’s hand, he threw it into the lake.

The precipice they now had to climb was several hundred feet in height.  Maskull was more anxious for Joiwind than for himself.  She was evidently tiring, but she refused all help, and was in fact still the nimbler of the two.  She made a mocking face at him.  Panawe seemed lost in quiet thoughts.  The rock was sound, and did not crumble under their weight.  The heat of Branchspell, however, was by this time almost killing, the radiance was shocking in its white intensity, and Maskull’s pain steadily grew worse.

When they got to the top, a plateau of dark rock appeared, bare of vegetation, stretching in both directions as far as the eye could see.  It was of a nearly uniform width of five hundred yards, from the edge of the cliffs to the lower slopes of the chain of hills inland.  The hills varied in height.  The cup-shaped Poolingdred was approximately a thousand feet above them.  The upper part of it was covered with a kind of glittering vegetation which he could not comprehend.

Joiwind put her hand on Maskull’s shoulder, and pointed upward.  “Here you have the highest peak in the whole land—­that is, until you come to the Ifdawn Marest.”

On hearing that strange name, he experienced a momentary unaccountable sensation of wild vigour and restlessness—­but it passed away.

Without losing time, Panawe led the way up the mountainside.  The lower half was of bare rock, not difficult to climb.  Halfway up, however, it grew steeper, and they began to meet bushes and small trees.  The growth became thicker as they continued to ascend, and when they neared the summit, tall forest trees appeared.

These bushes and trees had pale, glassy trunks and branches, but the small twigs and the leaves were translucent and crystal.  They cast no shadows from above, but still the shade was cool.  Both leaves and branches were fantastically shaped.  What surprised Maskull the most, however, was the fact that, as far as he could see, scarcely any two plants belonged to the same species.

“Won’t you help Maskull out of his difficulty?” said Joiwind, pulling her husband’s arm.

He smiled.  “If he’ll forgive me for again trespassing in his brain.  But the difficulty is small.  Life on a new planet, Maskull, is necessarily energetic and lawless, and not sedate and imitative.  Nature is still fluid—­not yet rigid—­and matter is plastic.  The will forks and sports incessantly, and thus no two creatures are alike.”