the matter of Stories he may be no older than you himself."
"That saying of yours is like a tree with no fruit. The King is always older than I, and about all things."
"But Piebald and I have already made you older about certain matters which the King never mentioned to you. That is the new good which you never expected. You thought you would always learn all things from the King; but now Maleldil has sent you other men whom it had never entered your mind to think of and they have told you things the King himself could not know."
"I begin to see now why the King and I were parted at this time. This is a strange and great good He intended for me."
"And if you refused to learn things from me and keep on saying you would wait and ask the King, would that not be like turning away from the fruit you had found to the fruit you had expected?"
"These are deep questions, Stranger. Maleldil is not putting much into my mind about them."
"Do you not see why?"
"No."
"Since Piebald and I have come to your world we have put many things into your mind which Maleldil has not. Do you not see that He is letting go of your hand a little?"
"How could He? He is wherever we go."
"Yes, but in another way. He is making you older - making you to learn things not straight from Him but by your own meetings with other people and your own questions and thoughts. "
"He is certainly doing that."
"Yes. He is making you a full woman, for up till now you were only half made - like the beasts who do nothing of themselves. This time, when you meet the King again, it is you who will have things to tell him. It is you who will be older than ho and who will make him older."
"Maleldil would not make a thing like that happen. It would be like a fruit with no taste."
"But it would have a taste for him. Do you not think the King must sometimes be tired of being the older? Would he not love you more if you were wiser than he?"
"Is this what you call a Poetry or do you mean that it really is?"
"I mean a thing that really is."
"But how could anyone love anything more? It is like saying a thing could be bigger than itself."
"I only meant you could become more like the women of my world."
"What are they like?"
"They are of a great spirit. They always reach out their hands for the new and unexpected good, and see that it is good long before the men understand it. Their minds run ahead of what Maleldil has told them. They do not need to wait for Him to tell them what is good, but know it for themselves as He does. They are, as it were, little Maleldils. And because a their wisdom, their beauty is as much greater than yours a the sweetness of these gourds surpasses the taste of water And because of their beauty the love which the men have for them is as much greater than the King's love for you as the naked burning of Deep Heaven seen from my world is more wonderful than the golden roof of yours."
"I wish I could see them."
"I wish you could."
"How beautiful is Maleldil and how wonderful are all His works: perhaps He will bring out of me daughters as much greater than I as I am greater than the beasts. It will be better than I thought. I had thought I was to be always Queen and Lady. But I see now that I may be as the eldila. I may be appointed to cherish when they are small and weak children who will grow up and overtop me and at whose feet I shall fall. I see it is not only questions and thoughts that grow out wider and wider like branches. Joy also widens out and comes where we had never thought."
"I will sleep now," said the other voice. As it said this it became, for the first time, unmistakably the voice of Weston and of Weston disgruntled and snappish. Up till now Ransom, though constantly resolving to join the conversation, had been kept silent in a kind of suspense between two conflicting states of mind. On the one hand he was certain, both from the voice and from many of the things it