She said at last, in a tone gone remote from sorrow, "I would not have you think, Eodan, that I ever condemned you because of some dead philosopher's thoughts on chastity. It was that I believed your case was like mine. I have been lonely too, now and then. But I see it was a false hope. No man, no woman ever has the same destiny; we are all pursued by our private Furies. Help me remember that, Eodan!"
He asked her, out of a newly reborn pain, "What happened, Phryne?"
"There was a boy in the household at Plataea," she said, still in the small voice that spoke to itself, knowing him only as a shadow under the evening star. "He was a slave too—not much older.... He walked like the sun before me. We would have had each other somehow—oh, there are families among slaves, even a slave can build a home. But then our master's creditors closed in. Antinous went first. I saw him led off; they said he would be shipped to Egypt.... Well," she finished wearily, "that was three years ago. But sometimes at night I still wake up from a dream where he kisses me."
Eodan's thought was jagged: His ghost will not let her look on another man. And even if she did, would she wish to bear a son that might be sold in Egypt?
He said aloud, "Phryne, have you heard that the Cimbri do not lie on an oath?"
She stirred, as if awakening. "What do you want to say?"
"The oath-ring on which I was wedded must have been cast into bangles for some Roman whore," he said bitterly. "However, I shall swear anyway to lay no hand upon you, as a man does on a woman, unless you ask it yourself. And I do not expect you will."
"Why—"
"I would like you to think you had one friend to trust," he blurted. And he did not know why he had made such an offer, unless it was that his memories of Hwicca had begun to shriek again.
"I will take your oath," she whispered.