Dio remembered the vow of the virgin priestesses of the Mount Dicte goddess:
"I would rather choose the halter
Than the hateful marriage bed."
A man's love was still as hateful to her as the hot sun to the flowers under water. But it was the same with love as with everything else: she had died and another life had begun, another love—love through death, like sunlight through water, having no terrors for the flowers in the depths; or like this winter sun—the smile of a child asleep.
"When are you going?" he asked about the most important thing as though it were a trifle.
"I don't know. Tuta hurries me, but I am quite happy here." She looked at him with a smile and again the boy disappeared and only the girl remained.
"I am happy with you," she added so low that he need not have heard.
"You will go away and we shall never meet again," he said, looking down as though he had not heard.
"My timid, absurd little boy—the winter's sun!" she thought with gay tenderness and said:
"Why never? Akhetaton is not far from Thebes."
"No, his city is the other world for us."