They fled, with squeaks of dismay; now Mistress was angry! Cordelia walked slowly toward Eodan across gleaming mosaic. Her knuckles, where she held up the loosened ungirdled stola, were bloodlessly taut. "If you think so little of me that you will only come on command ... that you will drive cows till midnight rather than even ask me if that is my wish--" She was close to him now, speaking through knotted jaws. "Don't think I have not seen you in corners with that Phryne! If you find me dull, you may as well go back to the fields!" I find you not dull but a foe, he wanted to say. There is too much blood between us. Aloud: "Mistress, I did not understand. I thought you would summon me." Something eased within her. She laughed, low, and put her hands on his shoulders. The gown fell about her feet. It could have been one of the statues he had seen--Venus, in her aspect of hot sleepless nights--that stood before him, save that veins pulsed under this skin and sweat jeweled it in the sun. "Hercules, Hercules," she cried, "can you not get it into your thick yellow head, I want to be the one commanded?" He stepped back, stammering, feeling the will of Venus but remembering she was Hwicca's enemy. "Mistress ... I cannot ... I am--" "Tonight," she said eagerly. "Just at day's end. We will watch the sun go down and we shall not sleep before it rises again." O my weird which I invoked, help me now! he thought. It came to him what he must do. And because the day was warm, and she stood clothed only in sunlight and her loosened dark hair, and he had slept alone for three nights, and he might be a flayed corpse in a few days ... he trod forward with the Bull strong and exultant in his soul. "Oh!" said Cornelia. "Hercules! No! Tonight, I told you!" He grinned, pulled her to him, and held her one-handed with muscles that had wrestled horned kine to earth, while his lips bruised hers and his free hand roved up and down her body. "Well," she sighed finally, "well, just once--" When they had rested for a time, he stood up. "Come, into the pool!" he said. She hung back. Laughing, he sprang. Water spouted, drenching her. He swam to the edge where she crouched and hauled her after him. She came up sputtering. He kissed her. She gave in and paddled about, while he snorted and churned, porpoiselike, darting in again and again, until at last it was she who urged him back onto the tiles. Thereafter she complained that her body was sore from the hardness, so they sought her bedroom. After a while she clapped her hands and had a girl bring refreshments. And so it went till sundown. As the first darkness came out of the east and up from the lower valley, like smoke, Cordelia drew Eodan's head down upon her bosom and held him there, with a grasp made gentle by weariness. "O Hercules," she whispered, "I thought there were no more men in the world worth caring for." He lay with closed eyes, drained of strength, wishing he could sleep, wishing this were Hwicca.