"Hail," he said.
She straightened herself. The plain white stola fell in severe folds, but could not hide a deerlike grace. She had not Cordelia's opulence, and she barely reached to his heart; yet it came to him that he had never thought of her as boyish, nor as just a little bit of a thing.
Her face, all soft curves and a few pert, nearly rakish angles, stiffened. She turned as if to go, but resolve came back; she continued her work, ignoring him.
He did not know why, unless it was that his small journey had given certain unseen chain-galls time to heal, but he went toward her and said, "Phryne, if I have wronged you, how can I mend it unless you tell me what I did?"
Her back was turned, her head bent. Under the softly piled black hair, he saw that her nape was still almost childish. Somehow that filled him with tenderness. She said, so low he could scarcely hear it, "You have not harmed me."
"Then why have you circled so wide of me? You never answered when I greeted you in passing. You have said me no word in weeks."
Her voice rose a little but shook: "Well, some women may be glad of your pawing. I was not!"
Eodan felt himself flush, as deeply as the western sky. He responded clumsily, "Why have you given me no chance to say what I meant? It was wrong of me to—to kiss you. I ask your pardon. But I was driven; there was a Power in that place—and did I hurt you so much?"
Then she looked up at him and said in a tone heavy with unshed tears: "It was chiefly yourself you harmed."
Eodan looked away. For a moment he trod from her, up and down a graveled path that mumbled beneath his feet. The bronze cloud cooled toward newly blown roses. In the west, just above the crumbling vine-covered wall, he could see a green streak, unutterably clear. Somewhere a cow lowed; otherwise it was very quiet.