As soon as the Lady was out of sight Ransom’s first impulse was to run his hands through his hair, to expel the breath from his lungs in a long whistle, to light a cigarette, to put his hands in his pockets, and in general, to go through all that ritual of relaxation which a man performs on finding himself alone after a rather trying interview. But he had no cigarettes and no pockets: nor indeed did he feel himself alone. That sense of being in Someone’s Presence which had descended on him with such unbearable pressure during the very first moments of his conversation with the Lady did not disappear when he had left her. It was, if anything, increased. Her society had been, in some degree, a protection against it, and her absence left him not to solitude but to a more formidable kind of privacy. At first it was almost intolerable; as he put it to us, in telling the story, “There seemed no room.” But later on, he discovered that it was intolerable only at certain moments-at just those moments in fact (symbolised by his impulse to smoke and to put his hands in his pockets) when a man asserts his independence and feels that now at last he’s on his own. When you felt like that, then the very air seemed too crowded to breathe; a complete fullness seemed to be excluding you from a place which, nevertheless, you were unable to leave. But when you gave in to the thing, gave yourself up to it, there was no burden to be borne. It became not a load but a medium, a sort of splendour as of eatable, drinkable, breathable gold, which fed and carried you and not only poured into you but out from you as well. Taken the wrong way, it suffocated; taken the right way, it made terrestrial life seem, by comparison, a vacuum. At first, of course, the wrong moments occurred pretty often. But like a man who has a wound that hurts him in certain positions and who gradually learns to avoid those positions, Ransom learned not to make that inner gesture. His day became better and better as the hours passed.

During the course of the day he explored the island pretty thoroughly. The sea was still calm and it would have been possible in many directions to have reached neighbouring islands by a mere jump. He was placed, however, at the edge of this temporary archipelago, and from one shore he found himself looking out on the open sea. They were lying, or else very slowly drifting, in the neighbourhood of the huge green column which he had seen a few moments after his arrival in Perelandra. He had an excellent view of this object at about a mile’s distance. It was clearly a mountainous island. The column turned out to be really a cluster of columns-that is, of crags much higher than they were broad, rather like exaggerated dolomites, but smoother: so much smoother in fact that it might be truer to describe them as pillars from the Giant’s Causeway magnified to the height of mountains. This huge upright mass did not, however, rise directly from the sea. The island had a base of rough country, but with smoother land at the coast, and a hint of valleys with vegetation in them between the ridges, and even of steeper and narrower valleys which ran some way up between the central crags. It was certainly land, real fixed land with its roots in the solid surface of the planet. He could dimly make out the texture of true rock from where he sat. Some of it was inhabitable land. He felt a great desire to explore it. It looked as if a landing would present no difficulties, and even the great mountain itself might turn out to be climbable.

He did not see the Lady again that day. Early next morning, after he had amused himself by swimming for a little and eaten his first meal, he was again seated on the shore looking out towards the Fixed Land. Suddenly he heard her voice behind him and looked round. She had come forth from the woods with some beasts, as usual, following her. Her words had been words of greeting, but she showed no disposition to talk. She came and stood on the edge of the floating island beside him and looked with him towards the Fixed Land.

“I will go there,” she said at last. “May I go with you?” asked Ransom.

“If you will,” said the Lady. “But you see it is the Fixed Land.”

“That is why I wish to tread on it,” said Ransom. “In my world all the lands are fixed, and it would give me pleasure to walk in such a land again.”

She gave a sudden exclamation of surprise and stared at him. “Where, then, do you live in your world?” she asked. “On the lands.”

“But you said they are all fixed.”

“Yes. We live on the fixed lands.”

For the first time since they had met, something not quite unlike an expression of horror or disgust passed over her face. “But what do you do during the nights?”

“During the nights?” said Ransom in bewilderment. “Why, we sleep, of course.”

“But where?”

“Where we live. On the land.”

She remained in deep thought so long that Ransom feared She was never going to speak again. When she did, her voice was hushed and once more tranquil, though the note of joy had not yet returned to it.

“He has never bidden you not to,” she said, less as a question than as a statement.

“No,” said Ransom.

“There can, then, be different laws in different worlds.”

“Is there a law in your world not to sleep in a Fixed Land?”

“Yes,” said the Lady. “He does not wish us to dwell there.

We may land on them and walk on them, for the world is ours. But to stay there-to sleep and awake there . . . she ended with a shudder.

“You couldn’t have that law in our world,” said Ransom. “There are no floating lauds with us.”

“How many of you are there?” asked. the Lady suddenly. Ransom found that he didn’t know the population of the Earth, but contrived to give her some idea of many millions. He had expected her to be astonished, but it appeared that numbers did not interest her. “How do you all find room on your Fixed Land?” she asked.

“There is not one fixed land, but many,” he answered. “Anal they are big: almost as big as the sea.”

“How do you endure it?” she burst out. “Almost half your world empty and dead. Loads and loads of land, all tied down. Does not the very thought of it crush you?”

“Not at all,” said Ransom. “The very thought of a world which was all sea like yours would make my people unhappy and afraid.”

“Where will this end?” said the Lady, speaking more to herself than to him. “I have grown so old in these last few hours that all my life before seems only like the stem of a tree, and now I am like the branches shooting out in every direction. They are getting so wide apart that I can hardly bear it. First to have learned that I walk from good to good with my own feet . . . that was a stretch enough. But now it seems that good is not the same in all worlds; that Maleldil has forbidden in one what He allows in another.”

“Perhaps my world is wrong about this,” said Ransom rather feebly, for he was dismayed at what he had done.

“It is not so,” said she. “Maleldil Himself has told me now. And it could not be so, if your world has no floating lands. But He is not telling me why He has forbidden it to us.”

“There’s probably some good reason,” began Ransom, when he was interrupted by her sudden laughter.

“Oh, Piebald, Piebald,” she said, still laughing. “How often the people of your race speak!”

“I’m sorry,” said Ransom, a little put out. “What are you sorry for?”

“I am sorry if you think I talk too much”

“Too much? How can I tell what would be too much for you to talk?”

“In our world when they say a man talks much they mean they wish him to be silent.”

“If that is what they mean, why do they not say it?”

“What made you laugh?” asked Ransom, finding her question too hard.

“I laughed, Piebald, because you were wondering, as I was, about this law which Maleldil has made for one world and not for another. And you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words.”