She looked at him intently. “There is a cold breeze,” she said, and stepping to the door, closed it before she ran across the room with little quick steps to throw back the covers and slip in beside him. The black brows brushed his cheek. “If you hated me and really wanted to get rid of me, let me ask you, what would you do? How different would you behave toward me than you are now doing? You tell me that talking with you here in the morning gives you pleasure and is a help to you. Why do you wish to stop it then, if I am willing to come? And if you are thinking of any danger to me, why surely that is my concern.” As her arm came around his neck and their lips met in the long deep kiss, he closed his eyes, not daring to look into hers, for this was no Damaris the maid (and it was not that he dared not, but that he would not). They came shuddering from the contact. “Ah, no,” he cried and drew her close again and for a third time. But then she said suddenly; “Three is enough,” and without another word slipped from beside him and was gone. All nights were now turned into a prelude to the mornings, and all days to a prelude for the evenings, when one of the other sisters would talk with them and gently jest at them for a pair of lovers, until Rodvard and Leece went out for a stroll under avenues of plane-trees, where lights flickered through the leaves in the warm summer air. The elder Vyana or the younger Madaille often accompanied them on these journeys, laughing a great deal as they conversed on matters of no importance, for it was as though he and Leece had signed a treaty never to show anyone outside how deeply they were concerned with each other. In the mornings, when the subject turned to themselves, there were checks and uncertainties in their words; yet it was a topic they could not avoid. Rodvard would often leave his breakfast uneaten, the better to lie beside her, kissing and kissing, with now and then some little thing said. “You must not love me,” she whispered one morning, turning her burning face from his; “not in the human way.” “Why not, Leece? I love—this,” and kissed her again. “Ah, so do I. But to love, to love—it would be falling into the hands of the Evil god for me to love you or you to love me, before you had been to instruction and accepted the doctrine of the Prophet. Do you understand?” He did not (nor, when he broke the rule he had set on himself and looked into her eyes, could he read behind them any illumination). “I am not sure I want to be an Amorosian,” he said, gravely, “but if you say I shall not love you, I will try not to. Only—”