“Mona—you have no proof!”
“You said—the day she came out of the woods by Leaping Water—that she was the sort to do anything for the man she loved. Well—she is that sort.”
“Mona!”
“Perhaps it was not for love then. You said she could appreciate—things. Perhaps Ravenutzi promised her a——”
“Mona! Mona!” he said, with so sharp an anguish that if I had not felt I owed it to all honorable women to show him where he stood, I should have left him to his dear illusion. Yet to see him so excusing treachery for the sake of a tinted cheek or the way a wrist was turned, set me white hot and throbbing.
“Would you rather,” I said, “she had done it for love, or for the King’s Desire?”
I could not see his face, but his voice was troubled with amazement.
“Mona—I—I was not prepared for this.” It was too dark to see, but I guessed the pauses to be the swallowings of his throat. “I thought you would be glad to have me go to that poor girl and make things as easy for her as I could. You never seem to think how she must have suffered before she came to this.”
“She hid it well. And depend upon it, Herman, whatever sufferings a woman has in such a case, whatever struggles, they are toward the thing she would do, not away from it.” I do not know how I knew this, but the moment I had spoken I was quite sure. “If she struggles,” I said, “it is to justify her right to do it, to quiet compunction, to appease her fears. Zirriloë came to the end too quickly to have suffered much.”
We were both still after that, while the heavens whitened and showed me a little of how worn he was and what marks of the trail were on him. I suppose he must have felt the melting of my mood toward him, for presently his hand stole toward me and began to finger the loose end of my cougar skin.