It was very still--for the coming storms of which I had been told might bring rain in the night, but did not yet disturb the peace of the daytime--and of a beauty at which my breath paused for a moment, and of which I cannot hope to tell you. But I was not looking for beauty. The need for beauty is continual, and for food is intermittent only. Yet the last is the more urgent while it remains unsatisfied. It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so that he cannot live long without it. I remembered our compact that I should be self-supporting in future. I knew the swiftness with which my companion considered it natural to travel. I was aware of the importance, not merely of reaching the tunnel-entrance by nightfall, but of doing so in such condition that we should be prepared at once to explore it. I looked round in a natural anxiety to discover some means of nourishment. I saw nothing to encourage hope, except that there was a curious fruit-like formation upon the hanging branches of a tree behind us. The leaves of this tree were very long and narrow, and of so light a yellow as to give an effect of whiteness, like the palest petals of the Californian poppy. At the root of many of the leaves there was a smooth-skinned tawny fruit, of the size of a loganberry. Opening it, I found that it was a fruit very certainly, containing a juicy pulp, and in the midst a single slender seed, of the size and shape of that of a lettuce. I tasted it cautiously, and found it delicious. My companion watched me with a friendly but unconcealed amusement. After a time, she gave the glance by which I knew that she wished our minds to communicate. “You have really no means of knowing,” she asked, “whether they may assist or kill you? Is this because you are in a world of strangeness, or are you accustomed to this exciting uncertainty?” I replied, “I have senses of taste and scent, which warn me that many things are unfit for eating, but they are not entirely reliable. The creatures of my kind depend largely upon tradition, as their own lives are too short to acquire much knowledge--and as, even were it otherwise, they would doubtless die in the experimental stages of obtaining it--and we eat such things as our ancestors have eaten before us. “Here, my only method is to choose such substances as appear most like to those which I have known to be wholesome, and eat a small portion. If the taste be good, and no ill consequence follow, in a few hours I can eat more freely.” “Your lives may be short,” she said, “but, at least, they lack dullness. How shall you go bad, if it should chance to be a wrong thing that you are now eating?”