TYDOMIN
Oceaxe sat down carelessly on the couch of mosses , and began eating the plums.
"You see, you had to kill him, Maskull," she said, in a rather quizzical voice.
He came away from the corpse and regarded her - still red, and still breathing hard. "It's no joking matter. You especially ought to keep quiet.""Why?"
"Because he was your husband."
"You think I ought to show grief - when I feel none?""Don't pretend, woman!"
Oceaxe smiled. "From your manner one would think you were accusing me of some crime."Maskull literally snorted at her words. "What, you live with filth -you live in the arms of a morbid monstrosity and then - ""Oh, now I grasp it," she said, in a tone of perfect detachment.
"I'm glad."
"Well, Maskull," she proceeded, after a pause, "and who gave you the right to rule my conduct? Am I not mistress of my own person?"He looked at her with disgust, but said nothing. There was another long interval of silence.
"'I never loved him," said Oceaxe at last, looking at the ground.
"That makes it all the worse."
"What does all this mean - what do you want?""Nothing from you - absolutely nothing - thank heaven!"She gave a hard laugh. "You come here with your foreign preconceptions and expect us all to bow down to them.""What preconceptions?"
"Just because Crimtyphon's sports are strange to you, you murder him - and you would like to murder me.""Sports! That diabolical cruelty."
"Oh, you're sentimental!" said Oceaxe contemptuously. "Why do you need to make such a fuss over that man? Life is life, all the world over, and one form is as good as another. He was only to be made a tree, like a million other trees. If they can endure the life, why can't he?
"And this is Ifdawn morality!"
Oceaxe began to grow angry. "It's you who have peculiar ideas. You rave about the beauty of flowers and trees - you think them divine.
But when it's a question of taking on this divine, fresh, pure, enchanting loveliness yourself, in your own person, it immediately becomes a cruel and wicked degradation. Here we have a strange riddle, in my opinion.""Oceaxe, you're a beautiful, heartless wild beast - nothing more. If you weren't a woman - ""Well" - curling her lip - "let us hear what would happen if Iweren't a woman?"