“Hush!” said Kari in a grave voice, when he had listened to this mad stuff that burst through my lips from the spring of a mind distraught by misery and despair.

“Why should I hush?” I asked.  “Is it not pleasant to think of the moon wearing a lovely woman’s shape and descending to give a lonely mortal love and comfort?”

“Because, Master, to me and my people the moon is a goddess who hears prayer and answers it.  Suppose, then, that she heard you and answered you and came to you and claimed your love, what then?”

“Why, then, friend Kari,” I raved on, “then I should welcome her, for love goes a begging, ready as ripe fruit to be plucked by the first hand if it be fair enough, ready to melt beneath the first lips if they be warm enough.  ’Tis said that it is the man who loves and the woman who accepts the love.  But that is not true.  It is the man, Kari, who waits to be loved and pays back just as much as is given to him, and no more, like an honest merchant; for if he does otherwise, then he suffers for it, as I have learned.  Therefore, come, Quilla, and love as a Celestial can and I swear that step by step I’ll keep pace with you in flesh and spirit through Heaven, or through Hell, since love I must have, or death.”

“I pray you, talk not so,” said Kari again, in a frightened voice, “since those words of yours come from the heart and will be heard.  The goddess is a woman, too, and what woman will turn from such a bait?”

“Let her take it, then.  Why not?”

“Because, O friend, because Quilla is wed to Yuti; the Moon is the Sun’s wife, and if the Sun grows jealous what will happen to the man who has robbed the greatest of the world’s gods?”

“I do not know and I do not care.  If Quilla would but come and love me, I’d take my chance of Yuti whom as a Christian I defy.”

Kari shuddered at this blasphemy, then having once more scanned that silver pathway on the waters, but without avail for the great fish or drifting tree or whatever he had seen, was gone, prayed after his fashion at night, to Pachacamac, Spirit of the Universe, or to the Sun his servant, god of the world, I know not which, and rolling himself in his rug of skins, crept into our little hut to sleep.

But as yet I did not sleep, for though Kari hated both, this talk of love and women had stirred my blood and made me wakeful.  So I took a rough comb that I had fashioned from the shell of a turtle, and dragged it through my long fair beard, which, growing fast, now hung down far upon my breast, and through the curling hair that lay upon my shoulders, for I had become as other wild men are, and sang to myself there by the little fire which we kept burning day and night and tried to think of happy things that never should I know again.

At length the fit passed and I grew weary and laid myself down by the fire, for the night being so fine and warm I would not go into the hut, and there sleep found me.