She talked constantly to Thol about her sorrow. He was not a very apt auditor. Being a native of the homeland, he could not see it, as she could, from without. It was not to him an idea, as it was to Thia’s deep alien eyes. It was just the homeland. As for the homelanders themselves, he had never, as you may remember, loved them; but he liked them quite well now. He supposed he really was not a god; but it no longer embarrassed him to be thought so; indeed it pleased him to be thought so. The homelanders no longer knelt when he passed by. He had asked them not to, and they reverently obeyed his wish. He supposed Thia was right in saying that they were less good than in the days of the dragon; but in those days he had hardly known them. He was glad to know them better now. His nature had, in fact, become more expansive. He wished Thia were not so troubled about the homeland. He wished she would think more gently of the homelanders, and think less about them, and talk less to him about them. Sometimes she even tried to enlist his help. ‘To me,’ she would say, ‘they would not hearken. But you, O Thol, whom in their folly they still believe to be a god, could give light to them and shame them back to goodness and strength, and so to happiness. I would teach you what words to say.’ But Thol, even though he was to be spared the throes of composition, would look so blankly wretched that Thia’s evangelical ardour was quenched in laughter. He did not know why she was laughing, and he hoped it was not at him that she was laughing: after all, he had slain the dragon. Nevertheless, her gaiety was a relief to him. But her ardour was always flaming up again. * * * * * She had very soon exempted him from that task which failed to cure the homelanders of their delusion about him. She agreed that goose-driving was not a man’s work. As he did not wish to be a shepherd again, and as it was needful for his own good that he should be set to some sort of work, she urged him to be a goat-herd. Goats, she said, were less dull than sheep; fiercer; more like dragons. So, beside the goose-pond, he herded goats; but without the enthusiasm that she had hoped for. One day, about a year after their marriage, he even suggested that he should have a lad to help him. She said, with a curl of the lip, that she had not known he was old and feeble. He replied, seriously, that he was younger than she; and as for feebleness, he asked her to remember that he, not she, had slain the dragon. He then walked away, leaving his goats to their own devices, and his wife to hers, and spent the rest of the day in company that was more appreciative of him. He returned of course before sundown, fearful of a lecture. Thia, who had already driven his goats into their pen, did but smile demurely, saying that she would always be glad to do his work for him, and that she was trustier than any lad.