“I have been working in the office of account, and learned of your trouble there,” he said, inconsecutively.
She turned toward him in the dark street, where far down, someone walked with a light, the hand on his arm trembling a little. “Oh, Rodvard—they would have put me in that prison for instruction and then turned me into the street without an obula.”
“I know. See—that is what we are looking for.”
An inn it was, a palpable inn, beyond the corner, with light streaming from its windows. They entered through the public-room where a table of men with mugs before them all turned their heads like sunflowers. One of them whispered behind a hand, and there was a snicker. A lugubrious person in a dirty apron came to the inner door and said yah, he would give them welcome for the night. Supper? No, said they both, and a small girl with her hair in tight braids showed them to a room where there was only one chair and a bed where they would sleep together for the first time since the night in Dame Domijaiek’s room, now in a far country and long ago. (Rodvard thought: she is wearing her hair down as an unwedded girl, and that is why they snickered.) She sat on the edge of the bed, tossing her head back.
“Rodvard,” she said, “you have been unfaithful to me.”
“No!” (He answered in reaction merely, and the thought that crossed his mind was not of the maid Damaris, but of Leece, now perhaps herself sleepless, and waiting for the dawn, when—) “Your Blue Star is still bright.”
She did not move, only crossed her eyes in a spasm of pain. “I think perhaps it was another witch. I know one put a spell on you. Did you know I saved you from it? You can go to her, if you wish; even take the Blue Star. I do not want it any more.”
“Lalette! Do not talk so.”
He stepped to her on the bed, slipped his arm under both hers where she supported herself, leaning backward, and drove her down, his lips seeking hers. She met him passively, neither giving nor avoiding. “Lalette,” he breathed again.
Now she twisted in his arms. “Ah, men think there is only one way to resolve every problem with a girl. It was that I wished to get away from. I will go back.”