‘O Thia,’ he said, ‘love me always!’
‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said, five years later, in a low voice. But I see that I have outstripped my narrative. I must hark back.
The sun had already risen far when Thol and Thia were wakened by a continuous great hum as of many voices. When they looked forth and down from the mouth of their high home, it seemed to them that all the homelanders were there beneath them, gazing up.
And this was indeed so. Earlier in the morning, by force of habit, all the homelanders had gone to what we call Berkeley Square, the place where for so many years they had daily besought the sun to call the dragon away across the waters. There, where lay the great smokeless and harmless carcass, was no need for prayers now; and with one accord the throng had moved from the western to the eastern foot of the hill, and stayed there gazing in reverence up to the home of a god greater than the sun.
When at length the god showed himself, there arose from the throng a great roar of adoration. The throng went down on its knees to him, flung up its arms to him, half-closed its eyes so as not to be blinded by the sight of him. His little mortal mate, knowing not that he was a god, thinking only that he was a brave man and her own, was astonished at the doings of her dear ones. The god himself, sharing her ignorance, was deeply embarrassed, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.
‘Laugh, O Thol,’ she whispered to him. ‘It were well for them that you should laugh.’ But he never had laughed in all his life, and was much too uncomfortable to begin doing so just now. He backed into the cave. The religious throng heaved a deep moan of disappointment as he did so. Thia urged him to come forth and laugh as she herself was doing. ‘Nay,’ he said, ‘but do you, whom they love, dance a little for them and sing. Then will they go away happy.’
It seemed to Thia that really this was the next best plan, and so, still laughing, she turned round and danced and sang with great animation and good-will. The audience, however, was cold. It gave her its attention, but even this, she began to feel, was not its kind attention. Indeed, the audience was jarred. After a while—for Thia’s pride forbade her to stop her performance—the audience began to drift away.
There were tears in her eyes when she danced back into the cave. But these she brushed away, these she forgot instantly in her lover’s presence.