Her back was turned, her head bent. Under the softly piled black hair, he saw that her nape was still almost childish. Somehow that filled him with tenderness. She said, so low he could scarcely hear it, "You have not harmed me." "Then why have you circled so wide of me? You never answered when I greeted you in passing. You have said me no word in weeks." Her voice rose a little but shook: "Well, some women may be glad of your pawing. I was not!" Eodan felt himself flush, as deeply as the western sky. He responded clumsily, "Why have you given me no chance to say what I meant? It was wrong of me to--to kiss you. I ask your pardon. But I was driven; there was a Power in that place--and did I hurt you so much?" Then she looked up at him and said in a tone heavy with unshed tears: "It was chiefly yourself you harmed." Eodan looked away. For a moment he trod from her, up and down a graveled path that mumbled beneath his feet. The bronze cloud cooled toward newly blown roses. In the west, just above the crumbling vine-covered wall, he could see a green streak, unutterably clear. Somewhere a cow lowed; otherwise it was very quiet. Eodan said at last, slowly, word by word, as he hammered it into shape within himself: "I understand. But you do not understand me. They say you are still a maiden. Well, you have called a curse on me for doing something of which you have no knowledge." Phryne's fingers clenched about a rose stalk. The thorns bit. She stared at the bright blood drops, wiped them on her gown in a blind fashion and said through unfirm lips: "Perhaps it is true. I thought one thing of you. When you did something else, _that_ is how you hurt me. But perhaps I have indeed not understood." "I am not wont to speak of these matters," he told her, with effort. "Among the Cimbri, it was not so--so twisted together. Wives did not betray their husbands. Husbands--well--a man is otherwise than a woman. He has other needs. I was driven by the Powers of earth; the Bull was within me that day, Phryne. And more than that--Can you understand how it felt to hear you tell what has--has become of my wife, the mother of my son, whom she killed to keep him free? Can you understand how I would turn for any--what is the word?--any comfort that you could give--or anyone could--Do you see?" he pleaded, facing her with his hands outspread. She rubbed her eyes. "I see," she whispered. He doubled up one fist and smote it softly into the other palm, again and again. "It would help Hwicca not a bit if I let the Bull roar within me so loud I could think of nothing else," he said. "Indeed it was a new thought to me, this you bring forth--that what is between a man and his wife, for good or ill, can in any way be changed by whether he sleeps alone or not when she is gone."