“Am I worth so little to the Outliers that they would not excuse this girl to be my wife? Ay, I want her,” he confessed; then as his stout-built body thrilled at the thought, threw out his arms, reddening, and laughed shamelessly.
“Do you know the rocking-stone on the top of the ledge by The Gap, that four men can barely stir on its pivot? I could rock it into the river to-day with the strength of my wanting.”
“And what would come in through the River Wall if you did?” said she; but Mancha would not talk of that.
“Do you know,” he said, “what the years of my life are to me, the years I have gone mateless? They are the stops in a pipe that plays a tune to my need of her. I hear them piping behind me and my blood runs to the music.”
“It shall play you a ten years’ measure yet,” she answered him, “before it pipes you your desire.”
“Not ten moons,” he insisted.
“Then,” said she, “it will pipe death to you and to your honor.”
He hid his face in his hands at that, groaned and bit upon his fingers. At last:
“I thought I should have had sympathy from you who have loved so well,” he said.
She could not deny him the comfort he so sorely needed on that point, but neither could she let him go without advising him what confusion must come of his persistence in his unhappy passion. He heard her, sliding his great hammer from hand to hand as though it were the argument balancing this way and that in his mind.