And now a kind of panic possessed him, driving him on and on: not the panic of being pursued by murderous faces, but a driving desire for humankind. He began to hope again for the sight and company of a strange people. At noon that day he saw a woman, idle and listless, sauntering inadvertently towards him. Not till he was within a few strides of her did she notice his step and look up. Taken unawares she gave one glance, and ran. She had uttered no word or cry. Fear was quick in her. She was small and nimble; her grace and fleetness made his pulse leap joyfully. The pursuit was brief and silent. He caught her by the shoulder, and she turned and flung herself at him. Her nails tore at his face, and her teeth drew blood from his fingers, but the trivial pain of these injuries did not for an instant distract him from his purpose. Soon she was powerless in his grasp, her bosom heaving, her nostrils dilated. To feel the life that moved in her made him mad. He bore her to the ground. Her resistance was at an end. The terror that spoke in her eyes edged his desire, but when he had had his will of her another and a strange feeling woke in his heart. She was shaking with sobs, and her sobs hurt him. He knelt at her side and gazed down with puzzled eyes, unaware that it was not she, but the mystery of his own compassion, that puzzled him. He was all bewilderment, his first proud sense of triumph and fulfilment having dwindled away. This girl by some magic was putting her pain into him. He wanted to comfort her, but he did not know that he wanted it. His tenderness was dumb: he could only stare stupidly, and wait till her grief should have spent itself. From time to time he grunted interrogatively. ‘Ugh? Ugh?’ His questions availed nothing, and at last, unable to bear his pity any longer, he lifted his hand to strike her. She, with a little moan, flung out her own hand to meet it. Her clinging fingers constrained him downwards till his face lay close to her own; her arms came round his neck. She lay moaning, her terror unsubdued. And now Ogo, in sympathy, moaned with her. But this queer terror of hers disconcerted him, so that he was very ready to be angry again. Its persistence thwarted him of a triumph more subtle than that of physical possession, a triumph whose nature he could not even dimly conceive, though he felt the lack of it: he was unaware that until he could know himself pleasing to this woman of whom he had had pleasure, his heart must remain unsatisfied of its deepest desire. But in time she became quieter, and finally she was silent and still. He spoke to her; grinned; searched her face for an answer.
‘We are sib,’ she said. Her voice was harsh with despair.
He leaped to his feet. He stared down at her with fear and sudden loathing. ‘It is not.’
‘It is so,’ she answered coldly. ‘We are sib.’
He beat his breast, raving aloud. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am called Wooma. I am the daughter of the daughter of Koor. And you are a son of Koor.’
‘I don’t know you.’ Ogo, fiercely calm again, fought against the fact and the curse that confronted him. ‘I’ve never seen you.’
‘I have seen you, but I have kept my face to the ground as a woman must.’
‘It is not,’ said Ogo. ‘You are not a daughter of Koor. You are a strange woman, and you have magic that tells you these things.’ But he did not believe what he said, and seeing her unmoved by his accusation he fell into despair. ‘We are sib?’ he asked.
‘It is so.’
‘Then I shall kill you.’
He snatched up his axe, which lay on the ground attached to his discarded belt; and if the girl had moved to escape he would have given chase and killed her in hot blood. But her movement was one not of escape but of willing acquiescence. Supporting herself on her long supple arms, she raised her body towards him, offering, with head flung back, the full pointed breasts and the living throat. He was checked, and again puzzled. He uttered an inarticulate noise, half question, half menace; and watched for her to shrink, writhe out of reach, and run. She did not move. They stayed so, mute and motionless, like sculpture, till, dropping the axe, with a low growl he straddled across her, seized the lithe column of her body in his arms, and set his teeth amorously in the soft flesh of her shoulder. She screamed briefly. Her arms enfolded him. He raised his head and looked long into her wild eyes.
‘I shall not kill you,’ he said. ‘You are my woman.’
Her eyes filled with glory. ‘Lord, I am you,’ she answered.