Thol within five years of the dragon’s death, Thol with his immense red beard and his stately deportment, was of course very definitely an elder; and still more so was that wife of his, that rather beautiful dark woman, Thia, whose face was so set and stern that she looked almost as though she--she!--were dancing. Thol was liked by the young people. They made much of him. They did not at all object to his being rather pompous: after all, he had slain that dragon, and they thought it quite natural that their parents should imagine he was a god. They liked him to be pompous. They humoured him. They enjoyed drawing him out. Among the youths there were several who, in the hours not devoted to earnest dancing and cursory guardianship of flocks, made pictures upon white stones or upon slabs of chalk. They liked especially to make pictures of Thol, because he was so ready to pose for them, and because he stood so still for them. They drew in a manner of their own, a manner, which made the veins of poor old Veo stand out upon his forehead, and moved him to declare that they would die young and would die in shame and in agony. Thol, however, was no critic. He was glad to be portrayed in any manner. And it much pleased him to have the colour of his mane and beard praised constantly by the young artists. He had supposed the colour was wrong. Thia had been wont to laugh at it, in her laughing days. Thia had never called him beautiful, in her praising days. It gladdened him that there were now many young women--Afa, for instance, and Ola, and Ispa, and Moa--who called him, to his face, ‘terribly’ beautiful. Thol’s face, which Thia had admired for its steadfast look, and later had begun to like less for its heavy look, had now a look that was rather fatuous. Afa and the others did not at all object to this. They liked it; they encouraged it by asking him to dance with them. He did not, as they supposed, think that he was too old to dance: he only thought that he might not dance well and might lose his power over them. He believed that they loved him. How should they not? Thia, though she never told him so now, loved him with her whole heart, of course, and, for all the harsh words she spoke at times, thought that no man was his equal. How should not these much gentler young women not have given their hearts to him? He felt that he himself could love one of them, if he were not Thia’s husband. They were not beautiful, as Thia was; and they were not wise, as she was; but he felt that if he had never seen Thia he might love one of them, or even all of them. * * * * *