Hwicca stood by the larboard rail. Her hair, loosened, rippled a little in the wind. He thought he could still see a tinge of its golden hue. Otherwise the moon turned her to silver and mist; she was not wholly real. But shadows drew the deep curves of her, where the torn dress fluttered and streamed. Eodan's temples beat, slow and heavy. He walked to her, and they stood looking east. The moon dazzled their eyes and flung a shaken bridge across darkly gleaming waters. There were not many stars to be seen against its brightness, up in the violet-blue night. The sea rolled and whispered, the wind thrummed low, the ship's forefoot hissed and its timbers talked aloud. "I had not awaited this," said Eodan at last, because she was not going to speak and he could find no better words. "To gain our own vessel!" "It seems more of a risk this way," she answered, staring straight before her. The hands he remembered--how fair was a woman's hand, laid beside the rough hairy paw of a man!--were clenched on the rail. "It is my fault. Had I not failed you this noontime--" "How did the Roman get to the door?" he asked. "You could have called me, or at least put your sword in him, when he neared it ... could you not?" "I tried," she said. "But when he began to move that way, slowly, as if by mere chance, talking to me all the while--he was so merry, and he was saying me a verse--I did not want to--" She took her head, her lips pulled back from her teeth and she said harshly: "Once I attacked him, were not all our lives forfeit? Was it not to be done only if death stood certain before us? I waited too long, that is all--I misjudged and waited too long!" "You could have warned him not to move further." "He talked all the time--his verse--I had no chance to--" "You had no _wish_ to interrupt him!" flared Eodan. "Is that not the way of it? He was singing you some pretty little lay about your eyes or your lips, and smiling at you. You would not break the mood with anything so rude as a warning. Is that not how he used you?" Her head bent. She slung to the rail and arched her back with the effort not to scream. Eodan paced up and down for a time. Somewhere out in the water a dolphin broached, playing with the moonlight. There was strangely little wind to feel when you sailed before it, as though the hollow, murmurous canvas above him had gathered it all in. When he turned his face aft, he caught only the lightest of warm, wandering airs. It was a fair night, he thought, a night when the Powers were gentle. It was a night to lie out with your beloved, as you carried her home. Eodan said finally, with more weariness than he had thought a man's bones could bear: