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“Tell me, what is your name?”

“To the gods I have no name. When I am at work a number is put upon me; it may be a different number every day. Among my own people I am called Dream.”

“And why was it that seven days ago you incurred the anger of your masters and were to die?”

“Seven days ago I had the care of a loom. By sundown so much work was to be finished. It is easy work. Our gods never give the women hard work. All the same, that which is appointed must be done. It was just at the beginning of the first spell of hot weather. The forest called me. It was stronger than I was. When I went to my midday meal I slipped into the forest and swam in the pool, and could not go back to the loom again. After that I dared not go back, for those who have disobeyed die instantly. Such is the will of the gods, and we cannot alter it.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “Those whom you call gods are not gods. They are descended from those who, many years ago, were men and women just as you are. They are not all-powerful. I myself mean to escape from them. Generations of slavery have crushed your spirit, but in the country from which I come there are no slaves. I shall escape and I shall take you with me.”

“You are good. I will do as you say. But how can one escape?”

“In the town on the shore I hope to be able to find a boat.”

She looked at me with her dark and lustrous eyes wide open in sheer wonderment.

“What is a boat?” she asked.

Her ignorance I found was not assumed. The making of a boat had been prohibited so long by the beings of the first class that now even the recollection of it had passed from the workers. They regarded the sea with terror. It was the grey liquid wall of their prison-house. To touch it was to die. They bathed in the forest pools, and never in the sea. The fish that they ate were fresh-water fish only. Their masters had told them numberless strange lies about the sea.

“Dream,” I said, “there is one thing which I cannot understand. You live in daily terror of these people whom you miscall gods. You are fairly well treated, but you are not free. You live as slaves. Why do you tell me, then, that you want every hour and every minute of life?”

She dipped a bare foot in the water below her, passing it slowly to and fro.

“There is always love,” she said pensively.

CHAPTER VIII

“What do you know of love?” I asked.

She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Almost nothing, except of the lesser loves–the love of children, the squirrels in the forest.”

“Of parents,” I suggested.

“No,” said Dream decisively. “You cannot love those whom you do not know.”

“But how does it happen that you do not know your parents?”

“How should I? Sometimes for two years, sometimes for three–as the gods decide–the child remains with its parents. After that it is taken away from its parents and brought up by the gods. That is the law.”

“But these women who have their children taken away from them–how do they bear it?”

“Sometimes they are so sad that they go away into the forest and eat the nightshade and die. More often they weep for a long time and then they forget. When a thing is the law and it cannot be altered, there are very few who become angry or grieved about it. What would be the use? The gods are very careful about the children, you know.”

“In what way careful?”

“If a child is weak, sickly, or misshapen, it is killed instantly. If it is unable to learn how to do any work it is killed. The strong which remain are well treated. For some years they do little work, they are well fed, they are healthy and happy.”