"Perhaps after all it had been better if thou hadst paid the price, lord Saxon!"
Swift words sprang to Ceawlin's lips, but the elder leader ran to them, shouting something in his own tongue. Ceawlin turned to answer, and Nicanor slipped away.
Face to face he came with a woman seldom seen beyond her jealous doors; a fat and shapeless bunch of garments topped by thin hair streaked with ruddy dye, a high white marble brow, an old face deeply lined. The woman was looking at him keenly, with boring vulture eyes. She spoke swiftly, in a voice clear-toned and silvery as a bell.
"I heard thee speak.... Once, long years ago, stood I in this place and heard a boy speak, an elfin, wolf-eyed child, who came out of the night and spoke with an un-childish tongue. Often since have I thought of him and the power within him, for though I was young in years yet was I old in knowledge, and I knew that never had I seen one like him. Into his hand I put a piece of silver, and I think it was the first that ever he had touched. Art thou that child?"
"Ay," said Nicanor. "That child was I. So it was thou who first didst teach me that silver could pay for souls." He thrust a hand into the pouch that hung at his belt and drew forth a broad piece of silver, holding it to her. "But I think it must be clean silver that pays for mine, O Chloris."
The woman flinched oddly. Both had forgotten the rising tide of excitement around them.
"Nay," she said. "I will not have it back. Canst not leave me the thought that there was one gift which I gave honestly—or is it with thee as ever with stony-hearted youth, swift to condemn, slow to understand?"
"Why should I condemn thee?" said Nicanor. "That is not mine to do until in me is nothing to condemn. Nay, rather could I pity thee."
The heavy lids opened slightly over Chloris's eyes.
"And wherefore?" she asked with a hard note in her flute-like voice. "If I pity not myself, why shouldst thou pity? Am I not loved, and have I not loved greatly? Have I not riches beyond thine imaginings?"