He turned, still blindly, and the woman of abomination, slim, girlish, virginal, with burning eyes, stood before him, her hands at her breast.
"Lord, I think it is—love," she said again.
"And you," said Zuan—"you what—you are!" But it was not really he who said that. It was a last faint protest from the man he once had been.
"Does that matter?" she pleaded, in an agony, her hands going out to him.
Young Zuan took a great breath. "God knows it should matter!" he groaned, "but I cannot make it weigh with me. Your spell is over my heart and soul, and I am sick for helpless love of you. When you touch me I tremble. When I see your eyes the world drops from me and I ride upon the stars breathless in some strange ecstasy. I have drunk madness before you and I am mad. No! It does not matter to me that you are what you are—the woman of abomination. I love you. You and I are bound together with chains. We cannot live apart."
Then for a time an odd little awkward silence fell upon them. Once Zuan put out his arms towards the woman as if he would take her into them, but as if moved by a sudden panic at what she had roused she shrank back, crying something under her breath that sounded like, "No, no!" And presently he moved past her a few steps down the slope of turf on which they stood, and straightway found himself at the brink of the westward cliff which rose from the water's edge. He knew where they were—some three or four miles north of the city and on the opposite side of the narrow island to where the fight of the night before had taken place.
"Will you tell me," he said at last, turning—it was a certain relief to break the strain they had been under—"will you tell me how we came here? We are a long way from the fisherman's hut and the cove where my galley lay."
"A lad helped me with you, lord," she said—"a vine-grower's lad whom I befriended two days ago. When you had fallen into the little ravine I found you there at its bottom, and at first I—thought you were dead. You lay so still! Then I felt your heart beat and knew you were only stunned. I tore a strip from my shift and bound your head with it, for your head was bleeding." Young Zuan raised a hand and for the first time discovered that a bandage was wrapped about his brows. "Then I waited there with you. I waited for a long time, climbing the bank once or twice to see how the fight above was waging. Not many of your men were killed, I think—ten or twelve perhaps—those who fought as rear-guard while the others were swimming and rowing in skiffs out to the ship—"
"Then they got away?" cried young Zuan, eagerly. "The galley got safe away?"