"How insignificant I must have seemed to you beside such grandeur." She could hear him breathing heavily in the darkness, sounding like a man struggling under a weight he could not bear.
"I did love you, Simon. That was why I cried when you said you wanted to marry me. The word love has many meanings. And your French troubadours may call it blasphemy, but it is possible for a woman to love more than one man."
"Not blasphemy. Trahison. Treachery."
"As you wish. But in that moment you and I shared by the lake near Perugia, I was altogether yours. That, too, is why I fled from you. I could not stand being torn in two."
"Why torn in two, if you find you can love more than one man?" The hate in his voice made her want to throw herself from the balcony, but she told herself it would ease his suffering for him to feel that way.
"I said it was possible. I did not say it was easy. Especially when the two men are at war with each other."
"And did Daoud know about me? Did you tell him what you and I did that day?"
"No," she said, finding it almost impossible to force the words through her constricted throat. "I could never tell him."
"So you could not admit to this magnificent man, this philosopher, this priest, that you had betrayed him with me."
"No," she whispered. "He was jealous, as you are. At first he wanted me to seduce you. But as he came to love me—I saw it happening and I saw him fighting it—he came to hate the idea of letting you make love to me. He came to hate you, because of that, and because he envied you."