"There is no mate for him," she answered slowly. "A man like him must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with silent raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too strong and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, 'twould be as if a lion had taken to himself for mate a jackal or a sheep. Ah!" with a long drawn breath--"he would go mad--mad with misery;" and her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard together, though none could see it. "He should have a goddess, were they not so rare," said Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. "He should hold a bitter grudge against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only one." "Yes, he should have a goddess," said my lady slowly again; "and there are but women, naught but women." "You have marked him well," said her lord, admiring her wisdom. "Methinks that you--though you have spoken to him but little, and have but of late become his kinswoman--have marked and read him better than the rest of us." "Yes--I have marked him," was her answer. "He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye." She rose up as she spoke, and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling to her fullest height, and towering there, splendid in the shadow--for 'twas by twilight they talked. "He is a Man," she said--"he is a Man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if men were so, there would be women great enough for them to mate with and to give the world men like them." And but that she stood in the shadow, her lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her cheek and brow, and overspread her long round throat itself.