“It is unheard of!” said Ramiki.
He turned away, he left the shining sun, the blowing wind, the moving reeds. He went away in a heated darkness to his house and sat there upon his bed. Like the beating of a drum in his head, over and over, resounded words he had overheard.
Had said one of the old wise men to another: “The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!”
Now Ramiki did not believe that saying, and now he experienced an agonizing doubt, and now he turned to proving to himself and to others that it was not so. That had been yesterday.... In the night he had waked, and there had poured over him like the river in flood another feeling for Halmis.... At the height of the tide he had not cared that she had so much of the god. If it was so, it was well so!... The tide was a wonderful tide; it held an hour, and then it began to ebb. But when morning came there was yet a fulness that sent him through the shining sun and the blowing wind and the waving reeds to Halmis. Then the tide had sunk with a harsh and dreadful noise.
Ramiki sat upon his bed and listened to the drum beat in his head. “One said to the other, ‘The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!’ One said to the other, ‘The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!’” His heart was bitter within him, bitter as a root he knew in the forest.
His father came into the house, and, sitting down, began to feather arrows.
Said Ramiki at last: “I found Halmis with a band of red upon her forehead.... She goes like a young man, walking alone!”
“That should not be,” said his father. “If one woman does a thing like that, another woman will want to do so too.”
“She has breasts all the same,” said the arrow-featherer.