“Look here, you little child,” spoke Eëtíon quickly. “What have you been thinking?”
“I thought——” Theria stopped.
“You thought I might take away your gift? That I, your lover, your betrothed, and therefore your lawful master, would snatch your freedom away?”
He took her right hand, holding it against his breast, now bending to kiss it.
“Theria,” he said soberly, “you haven’t begun to understand my love, not even begun to understand it.”
“Do you mean that you really wish me to reach out—to—to find joy in something beyond my home and children—beyond you, you, too?”
Eëtíon paused a moment in a sort of amazed impatience with her.
“Isn’t that what I have been telling you in as many ways as I knew how, ever since I first caught sight of you?” he inquired.
“I didn’t believe you.”