She took her hand from the door, but only to make of her rounded arms a bar across it, defying him:
“You would not struggle against me.”
Holding to the chair-back he stood looking at her, at first in surprise, then with weary patience.
“I should have remembered,” he said, “that it would be a part of your high breeding not to let me feel that I had been a burden on your hospitality.”
Of one color were her cheeks and her rose-red kirtle, as she shaped her unskilled lips to pleading. “It was not Helvin who ordered them to bring you here. It was I who asked it.... I shared the care of you with my women ... and found it ... no burden.”
Lowered for the first time was the lofty banner of her head. His gaze rested on it wistfully even while he continued his slow progress towards the door.
“My wounds have made you wondrous kind,” he said. “I have heard it told that such crimson mouths, for all that they are tongueless, are full of eloquence for women. But you see that they are healing fast. It would not last much longer anyway. Let me go while I can.”
Pain sharpened his voice, yet his hand was in every way gentle when he put aside the living bar that dared not tempt his weakness by overmuch resistance.
Almost in fear she looked up at him. “Randvar! Has it happened that this has slain your love for me?”
He touched with his lips the wrist he had taken. “I wish it had done so; then I should dare to stay and sun myself, and take it easily when, to-morrow or the day after, the skies change and you storm me forth with hard words—”