“How could you help it?” She looked at me in quick surprise. “You are not like your friend is who says this is good or not good, and that is the end of it. You are one in whom the vision clouds and colors. By the color of your mind when it falls under Ravenutzi’s I shall learn perhaps whether to trust my old distrust of him or my present friendliness. “Oh!” she cried, perceiving so readily at that instant the half conviction, half credulity, of my mind toward her that she was embarrassed by it. “Is it so among House-Folk that they must always explain and account for themselves? If I said to an Outlier that he could help me he would not have questioned it.” “But what am I to do?” “Hold the will to help me. Be friends with the smith if he is friendly, and say nothing of this to any one but me. When your time comes to take the Cup I will see that it is made light for you.” It did not sound very difficult, and perhaps I did not take it very seriously; at any rate I gave the promise. Trastevera unwinding herself from the striped cloth like a moth coming out of a chrysalis, resumed her feather coat and left me with that suddenness I had learned to expect of the Outliers, like a bird flitting or a weasel slipping in the chaparral. On the very first occasion of our being alone together after that I demanded of Evarra what Trastevera had meant by saying that she was of the blood of Ravenutzi, and that the blood was traitorous. I could ask that safely, because I had learned that, except in the one important matter of the Treasure, the Outliers had no skill in concealments and no knowledge whatever of indirection. It was as if somewhere in their history they had so sickened of the stuff of treachery that their teeth were set on edge at the mere attitudes of it, tricks, pretensions and evasions. So I knew that if I opened a forbidden matter, Evarra would tell me so flatly, and that would be the end of it. And if it was permissible to speak at all, she would do me no such discourtesy as not to speak freely.