"I mean," said she, "that in your world Maleldil first took Himself this form, the form of your race and mine."
"You know that?" said Ransom sharply. Those who have had a dream which is very beautiful but from which, nevertheless, they have ardently desired to awake, will understand his sensations.
"Yes, I know that. Maleldil has made me older to that amount since we began speaking." The expression on her face was such as he had never seen, and could not steadily look at. The whole of this adventure seemed to be slipping out of his hands. There was a long silence. He stooped down to the water and drank before he spoke again.
"Oh, my Lady," he said, "why do you say that such creatures linger only in the ancient worlds?"
"Are you so young?" she answered. "How could they come again? Since our Beloved became a man, how should Reason in any world take on another form? Do you not understand? That is all over. Among times there is a time that turns a corner and everything this side of it is new. Times do not go backward."
"And can one little world like mine be the corner?"
"I do not understand. Corner with us is not the name of a "And do you," said Ransom with some hesitation - "and do you know why He came thus to my world?"
All through this part of the conversation he found it difficult to look higher than her feet, so that her answer was merely a voice in the air above him. "Yes," said the voice. "I know the reason. But it is not the reason you know. There was more loan one reason, and there is one I know and cannot tell to you, and another that you know and cannot tell to me."
"And after this," said Ransom, "it will all be men."
"You say it as if you were sorry."
"I think," said Ransom, "I have no more understanding than a beast. I do not well know what I am saying. But I loved the furry people whom I met in Malacandra, that old world. Are they to be swept away? Are they only rubbish in the Deep Heaven?"
"I do not know what rubbish means," she answered, "nor what you are saying."
"That is what I have come to speak to you about," he said. "Maleldil has sent me to your world for some purpose. Do you know what it is?"
She stood for a moment almost like one listening and then answered "No."
"Then you must take me to your home and show me to your people."
"People? I do not know what you are saying."
"Your kindred - the others of your kind."
"Do you mean the King?"
"Yes. If you have a King, I had better be brought before "I cannot do that," she answered. "I do not know where to find him."
"To your own home then."
"What is home?"
"The place where people live together and have their possessions and bring up their children."
She spread out her hands to indicate all that was in sight. "This is my home," she said.
"Do you live here alone?" asked Ransom. "What is alone?"
Ransom tried a fresh start. "Bring me where I shall meet others of our kind."
"It you mean the King, I have already told you I do not know where he is. When we were young - many days ago - we were leaping from island to island, and when he was on one and I was on another the waves rose and we were driven apart."
"But can you take me to some other of your kind? The King cannot be the only one."
"He is the only one. Did you not know?"
"But there must be others of your kind - your brothers and sisters, your kindred, your friends."
"I do not know what these words mean."
"Who is this King?" said Ransom in desperation.
"He is himself, he is the King," said she. "How can one answer such a question?"
"Look here," said Ransom. "You must have had a mother. Is she alive? Where is she? When did you see her last?"
"I have a mother?" said the Green Lady, looking full at him with eyes of untroubled wonder. "What do you mean? I am the Mother." And once again there fell upon Ransom the feeling that it was not she, or not she only, who had spoken. No other sound came to his ears, for the sea and the air were still, but a phantom sense of vast choral music was all about him. The awe which her apparently witless replies had been dissipating for the last few minutes returned upon him.
"I do not understand," he said.
"Nor I," answered the Lady. "Only my spirit praises Maleldil who comes down from Deep Heaven into this lowness and will make me to be blessed by all the times that are rolling towards us. It is He who is strong and makes me strong and fills empty worlds with good creatures."
"If you are a mother, where are your children?"
"Not yet," she answered.
"Who will be their father?"
"The King - who else?"
"But the King - had he no father?"
"He is the Father."
"You mean," said Ransom slowly, "that you and he are the only two of your kind in the whole world?"
"Of course." Then presently her face changed. "Oh, how young I have been," she said. "I see it now. I had known that there were many creatures in that ancient world of the Hrossa and the Sorns. But I had forgotten that yours also was an older world than ours. I see - there are many of you by now. I had been thinking that of you also there were only two. I thought you were the King and Father of your world. But there are children of children of children by now, and you perhaps are one of these."
"Yes," said Ransom.
"Greet your Lady and Mother well from me when you return to your own world," said the Green Woman. And now for the first time there was a note of deliberate courtesy, even of ceremony, in her speech. Ransom understood. She knew now at last that she was not addressing an equal. She was a queen sending a message to a queen through a commoner, and her manner to him was henceforward more gracious. He found it difficult to make his next answer.
"Our Mother and Lady is dead," he said. "What is dead?"
"With us they go away after a time. Maleldil takes the soul out of them and puts it somewhere else - in Deep Heaven, we hope. They call it death."
"Do not wonder, O Piebald Man, that your world should have been chosen for time's corner. You live looking out always on heaven itself, and as if this were not enough Maleldil takes you all thither in the end. You are favoured beyond all worlds."
Ransom shook his head. "No. It is not like that," he said. "I wonder," said the woman, "if you were sent here to teach us death."
"You don't understand," he said. "It is not like that. It is horrible. It has a foul smell. Maleldil Himself wept when He saw it." Both his voice and his facial expression were apparently something new to her. He saw the shock, not of horror, but of utter bewilderment, on her face for one instant and then, without effort, the ocean of her peace swallowed it up as if it had never been, and she asked him what he meant.
"You could never understand, Lady," he replied. "But in our world not all events are pleasing or welcome. There may be such a thing that you could cut off both your arms and your legs to prevent it happening - and yet it happens: with us"
"But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which Maleldil is rolling towards us?"
Against his better judgment Ransom found himself goaded into argument.
"But even you," he said, "when you first saw me, I know now you were expecting and hoping that I was the King. When you found I was not, your face changed. Was that event not unwelcome? Did you not wish it to be otherwise?"
"Oh," said the Lady. She turned aside with her head bowed and her hands clasped in an intensity of thought. She looked up and said, "You make me grow older more quickly than I can bear," and walked a little farther _ off. Ransom wondered what he had done. It was suddenly borne in upon him that her purity and peace were not, as they had seemed, things settled and inevitable like the purity and peace of an animal that they were alive and therefore breakable, a balance maintained by a mind and therefore, at least in theory, able to be lost. There is no reason why a man on a smooth road should lose his balance on a bicycle; but he could. There was no reason why she should step out of her happiness into the psychology of our own race; but neither was there any wall between to prevent her doing so. The sense of precariousness terrified him: but when she looked at him again he changed that word to Adventure, and then all words died out of his mind. Once more he could not look steadily at her. He knew now what the old painters were trying to represent when they invented the halo. Gaiety and gravity together, a splendour as of martyrdom yet with no pain in it at all, seemed to pour from her countenance. Yet when she spoke her words were a disappointment.