Diadyomene recovered herself instantly, recalled to the larger conquest she designed.
'Yet pass on again: there is more—"At your service!" Whose?'
'Yours.'
'Mine! That is not possible,' she said coldly; 'nor of the whole can I make sense.'
'It means that I offered to serve her whose footprints I had seen—yours,—and pledged myself by the sacred names that she should have no fears.'
'Fears!'
Christian flushed painfully. It was not possible to intimate to her how he had considered that a woman unclothed would surely shrink from a man's presence.
'You make for a simple end by strange means!'
'How is it,' she resumed, 'that since quite freely you pledged yourself so sacredly to my service, you came most unwillingly when you thought I had need of you?'
Before her penetrating gaze shame entered.