"My lord! My lord! This man lies! He is no suitor to my daughter. She shall not call him lord though you cast her away. I say it, and I am her mother. Behold, he came a stranger into my house, and I sheltered and fed him. Thus does he repay the charity. My lord, wilt thou take Ramûa?"
Ribâta listened to her quite as attentively as to Charmides. The situation puzzled him not a little. Many and varied as his experiences had been, he had never met with one like this. His official nature, as one of the judges of the royal court, came up and stood him in good stead now. Having heard both sides of the case, he turned, for corroboration of the one or the other, to the principal factor in the whole matter—Ramûa herself.
"Maid, what sayest thou to all this? Wilt thou come to me in peace, and willingly?" he asked.
Ramûa's answer was not encouraging to his hopes. She moved forward a little, still trembling, the sudden hope of release lighting up her gray pallor. She did not reply to the question in words, but sank to her knees on the floor at Ribâta's feet, her hands upraised and clasped, the pleading in her face too easy to read. Not Beltani's daughter, this.
Ribâta gazed at her in pronounced admiration. Suddenly he coughed, turned on his heel, and began to pace up and down the narrow space before the door, head bent, brows contracted. Charmides knew well enough all that was in his heart, but he mightily feared the outcome of the debate. Nevertheless, the very fact that there could be a debate considerably raised Ribâta in his estimation. Even as he thought, Charmides prepared himself for a further and greater struggle. If Ribâta decided against him, if Ramûa went forth with the man, it should be, as he himself had said, over his, Charmides', dead body. Therefore he quietly loosened from its place the short, broad knife that had travelled with him from home, and with this in his right hand, lying along the under-side of his wrist, he stood leaning against the door, watching the death of the bright sunset in the west, the gay chariot with its rearing horses in front of the door, and, finally, the group in the room with him. No one spoke. Ribâta alone moved.
At length my lord's head gave a quick jerk, and he turned briskly towards Beltani:
"Mother of fair women, is thy daughter Ramûa ready to follow me? There lie in my chariot certain bags of golden coin that I have brought for thee; not that these could be any payment for a thing so priceless as thy child; but they shall go to show the love that I bear thee for her sake."
Beltani grew radiant. Here, certainly, was no indetermination. "Ramûa!" she cried. "Go thou instantly to my lord! He will take thee into the land of happiness."
Ramûa obeyed her mother's words by moving swiftly to Charmides' side, laying one light hand on his arm, and saying, quietly: "Behold my lord! Him will I follow forever, into Mulge and Ninkigal, or up to the silver sky, as Marduk decrees."
Charmides, looking into her face, smiled at her with his soul in his eyes. Then he turned again to Ribâta. "My lord," he said, "thou hearest. Thou wilt not take her from her heart; and her heart is with me."